


Comes the Flood

by mandalora



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: (naturally), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Gen, Order 66, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Destructive Behavior, Slow Burn, Till whatever this is going to be, gratuitous headcanons about the pyke syndicate, hurt... but will there be comfort?, maul drinks respect gangs juice, we shall see, we shall see that too, will there even be romance?!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:54:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 51,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23012833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandalora/pseuds/mandalora
Summary: “Oh, Tano, Tano, Lady Tano. If only I didn’t know.”Order 66 hits right in the middle of Maul and Ahsoka's duel. From there, it’s every man for himself, but somehow the two still end up hopping the same ride off Mandalore.
Relationships: Darth Maul & Ahsoka Tano, Darth Maul/Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 237
Kudos: 471





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Грядет потоп](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23855260) by [daddylonglegs (bobbinredrobin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobbinredrobin/pseuds/daddylonglegs)



> me: *dunks myself into a new rarepair a week before season 7 airs*  
> me: QUICK, WRITE SOMETHING BEFORE CANON GETS HERE
> 
> I'm simply being the change I want to see in the world ok. Shoutout to Bobbinredrobin for juggling ideas with me and writing a beautiful piece and overall just being amazing<3

All at once, it hits her.

She doesn’t even know what _it_ is, but when she comes to awarenesses aboard the shuttle thrumming in the endless tunnel of hyperspace, it’s overwhelming.

They ran. They took the only logical way out, and now she’s safe from all the crumbling glass and the fires and the smoke—

Why bomb the Palace?

That wasn’t part of the plan. Bo-Katan wouldn’t improvise without warning. Bo-Katan wouldn’t sacrifice the historic monument of their people—sacrifice Ahsoka—in a desperate last resort against Maul. And even if she would, there was no reason for such drastic measures that soon. It made no sense.

And then, her men.

It took Ahsoka a few moments to realize they were shooting at _her._

But no, no—they were aiming at Maul; they escaped from the Palace side by side, she was still with him when the 332nd took sight of her. They were shooting at him. 

They were shooting at them.

Ahsoka only heard Rex screaming her name over comlink before the line went dead.

She ran, without thinking, as soon as vivid memories began intermixing with reality and muscle memory caught up with instinct. She didn’t understand, nor could she try. She just ran, it was all she _could_ do—it was just like before.

Only, this time, their blasters weren’t set to stun.

It has to be a mistake, Ahsoka repeats in her mind like a mantra as she sits on the floor with her arms wrapped around herself. It has to be. Too many things happened at once; she’s overwhelmed, she must have missed some crucial detail amidst the chaos. 

How could she get distracted like that? That isn’t like her. 

She can only hope Rex is alright. No—she’s sure of it. If she could get out, so could he.

How could she get out without him?

How could she leave him?

How could she leave her men? She had to run. Why did she run?

Why were they shooting?

*

She isn’t cold, but she may as well be for she can’t make the shivering stop. 

The ship’s humming translates into the subtle vibration of the durasteel wall against her back, and it shouldn’t be anything new, only it jolts through her body like hard pulses of electricity. It sends shudders down her spine, which she can’t lessen no matter how tightly she hugs her knees to her chest. It pushes on the walls of her skull, grows into a headache.

The Force is stifling. It thrums, it rings with something so unsettling and messy that Ahsoka can’t tell whether the distress she feels is fully her own.

*

I have to get to Coruscant, she thinks. 

I have to find Anakin and Master Kenobi, she thinks. I have to tell them what happened.

She failed her mission. She failed to take it to the finish. Something went horribly wrong, and she can’t figure it out on her own—she doesn’t answer to the Council, not anymore, but they will know what to do. They will help.

The 332nd betrayed her. Her men attacked her. 

Was it something she did? 

No, this isn’t about her. There’s a larger concern here. She has to warn the Council.

The clones malfunctioned.

The clones malfunctioned?

*

_I have to get to Coruscant,_ runs through her mind again and again as she finally rises to her feet. I have to get to Coruscant. I have to get to Coruscant.

The wall keeps thrumming against her palm. The ship is still moving. Where is it going?

Where are we going?

They ran. They took the only logical way out. They escaped from the Palace side by side. Maul... 

...is on the ship with her, and the recollection turns her spine to ice. 

_Where are we going?_

Quiet as a shadow, conscious of her every step, Ahsoka makes her way to the cockpit, stills before entering and spots him through the hallway. The cool metal of her lightsabers in her grip is comforting— it’s the only comfort. It’s the only thing she can count on, at this point.

She’s fought Ventress before. She’s fought Grievous before. But never before has she felt so much turbulent force of the Dark Side that the Sundari Palace’s throne room greeted her with.

Maul sits in the pilot’s chair, back to the door, hands at his temples. Shoulders slumped, rigid and tense to mirror the thick distress in the room—or maybe it’s the other way around. The air is alive with fuming and dancing echoes of rage and the Force groans.

Ahsoka takes a deep, silent breath and clenches her lightsabers tighter.

Maul lifts and turns his head—only slightly, nearly imperceptibly—and Ahsoka braces herself. 

She can’t think of a venture more physically and mentally punishing than fighting this man. He could have crashed his full might of the Force down on her. She could feel it all throughout their duel, thrashing right on the edge like rising waves; instead, he gave her the honor—or insult—of a proper fight, chose to pressure her endurance and resolve with sheer strength and speed and cunning. Overwhelm her. Drain her.

Ahsoka doesn’t know how long she could have held out had the Palace not exploded.

She also doesn’t know how long it’s been since they fled off planet. A few hours, at least, certainly. Probably. If Maul hasn’t made a move against her up until now...

The expectancy of immediate danger lessens, though the grip on her weapons doesn’t.

“Where are we going?” Ahsoka at last forces herself to voice, and in the heavy silence the words sound startlingly loud.

The lack of response is surprising, somewhat, considering how much Maul clearly likes to talk.

For a moment, Ahsoka considers coming up to the co-pilot’s seat and simply taking a look at the dashboard. Take note of the destination coordinates, maybe fiddle with the controls by herself. Exit out of hyperspace.

No.

She will not come near this man. If he can even be called one.

Endless flickers of white and blue spill in through the viewport and bounce off the tips of Maul’s horns.

Part of Ahsoka wants to repeat the question, now firmer, more demanding, but she’s more than sure he heard her the first time.

“I need to get to Coruscant,” she declares instead.

Maul remains silent, showing no new signs of awareness, and tension settles in Ahsoka’s stomach.

Force knows where he’s taking her, and for what. If not Coruscant, then she simply needs to get away.

After Mandalore, attempting to take him down—and in such a confined space, at that—isn’t even an option.

“Maul,” she grates, and can’t tell whether the strain and low set of her voice reads as anger or fear. “I need to get to Coruscant.”

One long moment. Another. Then—

“No. You don’t.”

Indignation mixes with surprise at the fact that he chose to respond at all. “Huh?”

But perhaps a continuous conversation is too much to ask.

_“Maul,”_ she repeats stubbornly after yet another stretch of silence, “I said, take me to Coruscant.”

Of course he would never do as she bids, but at least she won’t show even a shred of complacency.

Maul only sighs, the act nearly imperceptible, and amidst the stagnant anger Ahsoka suddenly catches a glimpse of his irritation. It’s dull, sluggish, almost... weary. She can begin to hear that strange exhaustion in his manner when he says, once again, “No.”

“Then where are we going?”

“Far away,” he replies after a minute, and Ahsoka barely makes out the words. They’re quiet—too quiet, somehow distant, absent. “Far from Mandalore. Far from Coruscant. Far.”

He’s made a decision for the both of them, and won’t take no for an answer. Not that he’s asking for her opinion. Ahsoka presses her lips together, frantically trying to think her way out. Force knows where he’s taking her. Force knows what he’ll do to her. Force knows when she’ll see her home again.

Not home any longer, really... but no, no, it still is, and always will be regardless of what she tries to tell herself. The truth of it echoes without fail in moments like this, moments full of confusion and helplessness and lonely desperation.

The facade of courage is breaking, though it’s not like it’s been working for her in the first place.

“Maul,” she tries again, not knowing what she’s even trying to appeal to. Why she’s trying at all, when she can see it’s no use. “You can go. I won’t stand in your way. Just drop me off somewhere first.” They’ll find Maul again. Having just lost his seat of power, he’s alone with no allies. He can’t do much damage now, and the Order will find him before he can; what happened on Mandalore is a catastrophe, warning the Council is more important at the moment. “Just drop me off. I just want to go home.”

“Home,” Maul echoes, and it comes out as a quiet, drawn-out hiss. Ahsoka can’t identify the sound he makes next, though she guesses it’s some sort of a snort or a chuckle.

It’s not a sound of a stable man. The rolling pitch of it makes a chill crawl down the back of her neck. 

“Home,” he repeats, and this time the word is soaked in ridicule. “Forget it. You’d be doing yourself a favor.”

“No,” tears out of Ahsoka’s throat against her better judgment. The “advice” could be taken as threat, and she chooses to interpret it as such for the sake of staying alert. “Just let me go home—”

“This is not up for discussion.”

“—that’s all I ask. And you can just be on your way.”

“I said, forget it.”

“The Republic won’t come after you.” At first. “I promise. I won’t tell the Jedi where you are. Hell, I couldn’t even if I wanted to—I don’t know where you’re going. You’ve got nothing to lose. Just let me go back to the Jedi—”

“The Jedi are dead, girl,” Maul snaps, and it’s the first time he calls her something other than Lady Tano or some mocking variant of her rank. It’s unprecedented, it’s _genuine,_ just as genuine as the anger bubbling in his voice.

The assertion cracks like a whip, stunning Ahsoka into momentary silence.

When she regains her breathing, she can only blink. “Huh?”

Cold bitterness drips from Maul’s words; a raw emotion so sudden and so amiss to his character that Ahsoka can’t begin to comprehend it. “Forget your Republic. Forget your Jedi. Forget your _home._ It’s all gone.”

“No,” Ahsoka says firmly, calmly, because she knows better. “It’s not.”

Those Sith never know what they’re talking about.

Unease sparks in the back of her mind when Maul snaps his head to the side and then turns his seat around to face her fully. For the briefest of seconds Ahsoka sees the anger fuming in his acidly yellow eyes before it gets replaced by familiar derision. The tension in his jaw and shoulders lessens, turns into snakelike smoothness of movement when he sits back and narrows his eyes at her.

If he notices Ahsoka’s white-knuckled grip on her lightsabers, the readiness to switch them on at any moment, he doesn’t show it. Or maybe doesn’t deem it worthy of acknowledgment.

“Search your feelings,” Maul prompts then, mockery laced into his suddenly silky tone. “Isn’t that what they teach you?”

Slow inhale. Steady exhale. “Don’t.”

“You know it to be true. You know it already.”

“I don’t. And you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And your clones didn’t know what they were doing, hm?”

Ahsoka freezes.

“It was an accident? A misunderstanding? A malfunction?” The hazy smirk at the corner of Maul’s mouth is that of scorn, but it isn’t addressed at her. His eyes are piercing, but they look somewhere inward. “Why were they shooting at you, Tano?”

Ahsoka’s brow twitches, tenses; she clenches her teeth and swallows.

“Why were they shooting?”

_Why were they shooting?_

Maul lets several torturous seconds roll by, evidently content with watching Ahsoka start to sink into the quicksand of her thoughts.

“They were trying to kill you,” he finally says.

The fact of it slams like a sledgehammer and rings and rings against the walls of her skull.

She blinks hard, once, twice. “No.”

“Just as the other battalions were trying to kill their own Jedi generals.”

_“No.”_

“Though, I don’t suppose many others got as lucky as you.”

“No,” Ahsoka moans, and the shakiness of her voice would have made her sick had she had the will to care. “No. No. No.”

“And do you know why?”

“They weren’t,” Ahsoka snaps. Her throat tightens, clenches almost to the point of pain, and she has to strain to catch a fulfilling breath. “You don’t know. You don’t know anything.”

Maul looks at her; long and inappropriately, unbearably calm—and _laughs._

It’s dark, it’s grating, it’s not at all a pleasant sound. It’s acidic. It’s humorless. It’s bitter. 

Helpless dismay wraps like chains around her entire body and Ahsoka almost shakes.

“Oh, Tano, Tano, Lady Tano,” Maul singsongs as he winds down. “If only I didn’t know.”

A shudder threads through Ahsoka now, then another and another and another.

“Shut up,” she hisses on instinct, though the look in her widened eyes must be undermining the hostility of her voice. “Shut your mouth. You have no idea.”

_No idea about what?_

What exactly? Perhaps he will tell her. But, clearly, she doesn’t want to know.

“Tell me,” she spits, glaring into those bloodshot, sickeningly yellow eyes. Not into his yes. Don’t look a threat in the eyes. The calm manner with which he looks back is infuriating. He is infuriating, utterly, fully— _“Tell me.”_

“How sad,” Maul drawls, “that you Jedi were too blind to see it yourselves. To think he was right in front of you this whole time…”

He hums, narrows his eyes slightly as if in thought. “What did he call himself?” Marked fingers tap the armrest of his chair. “Ah, yes. The Supreme Chancellor. That was it.”

He furrows his brow and his gaze suddenly loses its focus, blurs into something distant. “At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi... Why… He has waited an awfully long time…”

Ahsoka makes no attempt to make her trembling voice obey her. “Waited for what?”

Presence and recognition return to Maul’s eyes as he fixes them on her once again. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard the name ‘Darth Sidious’ before.”

Confusion and alarm swirl in Ahsoka’s head and muffle her brain and echo with sharp tingling in her fingertips. She tries to clench her fists tighter but the muscles start to ache and the protruding forms of her lightsabers dig painfully into her palms, so she presses her lips together instead.

“Darth Sidious,” Maul continues, explanative and patient, and yet there’s a new subtle hint of something like restrained malice in his tone, “harbingered the return of the Sith and brought it right to the Republic’s doorstep. He even knocked, but no one heard him, and no one saw him enter.

“You must have heard all about how Kenobi lost his Master, many years ago. How no one could figure out how a Sith was allowed to infiltrate Theed’s Royal Palace. Well, you see—when Sidious entered, he left the door wide open for his apprentice.”

Something—something Ahsoka doesn’t allow herself to acknowledge and dwell on—shifts, slides into place, and clicks.

“Chancellor Palpatine. Leader of the Galactic Senate. Commander-in-Chief of the Republic military. The most advantageous position anyone could ask for—total control over the Jedi, and, more importantly and greatly, the clones.

“Pawns. The very definition thereof. Countless soldiers—there’s great power in numbers—loyal to him and only him, from the very beginning and until the very end.” Maul narrows his eyes as he moves them slightly to the side and settles them on some undefined point. “And now he’s got himself a conditioned, tested, broken-in army. Clever.”

The sudden change in his gaze’s direction pulls Ahsoka out of the hypnosis of new information clashing with shock. Her brow creases and she blinks, hard, rapidly— _wait. Wait._

“What…”

She registers the quickening of her breathing only due to the cool air rushing back and forth over her slack parted lips; when Maul slides his eyes back to hers, she gasps altogether, but fails to fill her lungs with sufficient air.

“You were fooled,” Maul enunciates slowly, as if breaking down his speech into simpler terms for ease of comprehension. “Spectacularly, if I may add.”

There’s no derision to be heard in his hissing words. The lack thereof only adds to the unease of the unknown and unfamiliar.

Everything feels unknown and unfamiliar, now.

“I don’t—” Ahsoka gulps as she tries and fails to wrap her mind around anything at all. _I don’t know what you’re saying. I don’t understand you._

“I don’t believe you,” she instead pushes out the phrase that’s mechanical and easy, that will help to put on a face of dauntlessness and defiance.

Maul shrugs. As if he’s tired. As if this is of no consequence to him. The minimal aggression coming from him gives Ahsoka enough courage and will to start building up her own. “Believe what you will. But the fact stands—the clones were never yours in the first place.”

Bantha fodder, Ahsoka thinks with the newfound strength of desperate anger. Through and through. This is a Sith. Anything coming out of a Sith mouth is filth and propaganda.

“Lies,” she growls. “Don’t tell me about clones. No one knows the clones better than the Jedi.“

The sigh Maul lets out is merely a sharp huff of amusement through the nose. “And still, you don’t see.”

“We’ve worked with them for years, fought with them side by side—”

“And yet they turned on you without batting an eye, with a snap of his fingers.”

“No.”

“You are in denial.”

”No!”

Rex was calling out to her. Rex was trying to warn her, he was trying to make sure she was alright. Rex was on her side. Rex was loyal.

And so were the others. They had to be.

They were the Boys in Blue.

They had to be.

They _were._

“No,” Ahsoka forces out, but her voice cracks and moisture creeps into the edges of her vision. She shakes her head, blinks her eyes hard to try and dispel the blurriness, try to dispel the images of their blasters, of their faceless helmets. “No. No.”

“The Jedi should be as good as gone, by this point.”

“Lies,” Ahsoka barks, and with the next blink tears spill over and run down her cheeks. “They’re there. They’re alive. I can feel them.”

_I can feel them. I can feel them._

“Can you?”

_I can feel them._

Ahsoka strains her mind, tries to tear through the thick disturbance of Maul’s presence in order to reach that dear, familiar clearing of her inner peace.

Anakin is alive, she doesn’t even doubt it. He’s the most resourceful person she knows.

Masker Kenobi is alive. Of course he is. He can survive anything—and Cody would never let something like this happen.

Master Plo is alright, it can’t be any other way. Wolffe’s men wouldn’t let him down.

The Council knows what to do.

There’s nothing to worry about.

She can feel them.

She _can._

The clearing is not a meadow, but an ocean; empty and wide, as wide as any sense can register. Its waters cover anything and everything, submerge everything deep beneath, and the wind clears any scent of life out of the sky.

_I swear I can feel them,_ Ahsoka yells into nothing, but the waves drown out her voice. _I swear, I can, I can, I can feel—_

_—Anakin—_

The Force howls and roars and blusters. Waters slam through her core, fill her lungs; there is nothing and no one.

There is nothing.

She is tired.

Just tired, that’s all; she’s confused and numb with all the distress; she needs to calm down, she merely needs to calm down in order to sense them, to sense Anakin—

“Can you feel them, Tano?”

_“It’s not true,”_ Ahsoka cries out and recoils from the sound of her voice. Her throat is dry, and her eyes burn, and her hands are clammy and cold and she’s cold, so cold, so cold she can’t swim so she’s drowning— “I can feel them, I can, I can—”

The Force is cold and empty all around and inside her, it is void, it is null, and Ahsoka wails.

Only barely, at the edges of her hearing, does she register the clang of metal as her lightsabers fall to the floor. Tears flood her eyes and she can hardly see; all there is is red and black, red blood, black void.

“It’s not true,” her lips move to say; she doesn’t know how many times she’s said it, she lost count. Empty words, hoarse, failing voice. “It’s not true. Not true. Not true.”

*

Time has no measure in this emptiness, and she doesn’t know how long she’s stood like this, frozen and abandoned, chanting useless words of denial.

Maul snaps her to reality.

“Don’t overstrain yourself, Tano.”

His voice is mostly blank, like his expression—tired and bored. A fist against one cheek, elbow propped up on an armrest. His eyes are half-lidded as he looks on with mild, unbothered irritation. “Do yourself a favor.”

Ahsoka hates her body for squeezing out a fresh surge of tears right at this moment. 

She’s shown him so much weakness. Exposed so many vulnerabilities.

It’s shameful. To say nothing of dangerous.

The Jedi may be weakened, but not gone. Not all of them. She’s sure of it. She can help. She’ll find whomever she can. She’ll find Anakin, Rex, Master Kenobi—she’ll find them all.

Ahsoka makes a move to wipe her eyes, but stops herself to preserve what little dignity she still retains, if any at all. 

When she thinks she can keep her voice steady enough, she takes a deep breath.

“Take me to Coruscant,” she croaks.

A second of silence, then another, and then Maul hisses out a long breath, shuts his eyes, and rubs the bridge of his nose.

“Did you hear _anything_ I said?”

Ahsoka manages to hold back a sob. “I did.”

It’s a wonder how much bitterness the tiny words hold.

“Evidently, you didn’t. Perhaps you need a reminder.”

Her eyes seem to have become a separate entity; the tears come and come without control, and even budding anger has no power to stop them. It’s ghastly, the prospect of being stuck with this man between time and space for the foreseeable future—the very idea of it threatens to well up a new surge of hysterics, but Ahsoka takes deep breaths and forces herself to hold her ground.

“I need to help them,” she chokes out, and the words scrape her throat. “I can—”

“You can do nothing,” comes the sharp retort, and Ahsoka flinches at the abrupt bite in Maul’s voice. “He has risen to the top. He has finally revealed himself. Now he will hunt down every remaining Jedi and wipe any speck he wishes off the face of the galaxy.”

Maul’s anger is thick and scorching. It’s contagious; it seeps into the air and hangs heavy, like clouds ready to erupt with lightning.

“The Jedi are _dead,_ Tano.”

Ahsoka tightens her jaw, balls her hands into fists. She burns her glare into Maul’s, and the head-on intensity of it makes the yellow of his eyes not seem so scalding anymore.

She will not hear it out of his mouth again.

“They are, aren’t they?” Her voice tears out harsh, acrid, and Ahsoka barely even recognizes it. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? You must be so pleased.”

Don’t give in to anger, they’ve told her. But it doesn’t matter now. If it helps to distract her from her grief, then so be it.

“That’s what you intended all along, right?” The accusations rise in volume and pitch despite being grated through clenched teeth. “That’s what you wanted? The Jedi are _dead,_ Maul, aren’t you ecstatic?”

Maul stays silent, tense but refusing to give in to provocation, and Ahsoka curls her lips back in a snarl.

“What are you waiting for? Turn the ship around. Go back to your master. Kill me and take my body to him as a gift, why don’t you.

“You couldn’t kill Obi-Wan, but at least you’ll get one little Togruta girl instead. Better than nothing, right?”

There’s a dangerous glint in his narrowed eyes, the slightest twist to the corner of his mouth—the only indications of his unrest amidst the dead, eerie calm beneath the crushing weight of the Force. He shouldn’t be this calm, Ahsoka passingly thinks. He’s a Sith. He shouldn’t even be capable of it. 

“Don’t waste your breath,” he simply says.

It’s infuriating.

There’s nothing, no one more infuriating than him.

“You killed Master Qui-Gon,” Ahsoka spits. Her throat scrapes and burns. “You killed Duchess Satine. You killed so many, so many innocents—”

_And now the Jedi are dead._

“How dare you still live when they’re dead.” 

_So kill me,_ a mental image of Maul appears before her eyes, sneering with his arms wide open in a mockery of a welcome. _Obey your hatred. Strike me down. Show me what the Light Side is really capable of. Show me its righteous retribution._

The real Maul sitting before her does nothing of the sort, and Ahsoka doesn’t quite know how to deal with that.

“You’re in league with him,” she hurls as a last resort, and it’s the only thing that makes something shift off balance in Maul's controlled anger. He remains perfectly still and it’s all concentrated in his eyes—so thick, so intense it seems almost too much—when in the depths of that silent rage, something snaps.

“No,” he hisses, and Ahsoka barely manages to catch it for how quiet it is. The sound sends goosebumps down her spine regardless. “No, I am not.”

Against all logic, somehow it’s the only thing in this chaos that is painfully clear. Ahsoka should have trouble with accepting it, she thinks, she should ignore it and deny the truth of it despite the obvious—but she doesn’t.

That hardly changes anything, she decides. The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy.

She doesn’t reply. She only tightens her lips, tears her eyes away, and steels herself for a long ride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title --> MONO - After You Comes the Flood


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello all, guess what! I’m continuing this thing! Because. Well. This pairing gripped me a wee bit tighter than I originally thought. So -
> 
> As, I’m sure, was already clear from the first chapter, the versions of the characters here don’t exactly align with what we saw in the siege of Mandalore, mostly because I’m sticking with my original thought process for continuity’s sake. In this AU, Maul and Ahsoka’s encounter on Mandalore was a bit less... personal and not as long and friendly as in canon. Also, Maul doesn’t have quite the full picture here - at this point in time neither he nor Ahsoka know anything about Anakin’s turn. So, if the potential for confusion (though hopefully that’ll be kept to a minimum) doesn’t scare you off, then go on right ahead and happy reading! :D
> 
> Also, let me just say right off the bat - this is not a redemption-for-Maul fic. I will do my best to keep the characterization as true to canon (last arc of season 7 not included) as I can because staying consistent to the image of the characters we’ve been given and using that as a sandbox with boundaries is what’s most interesting to me. The events of Rebels are still very much at work in this AU. All I’m saying here is that Maul and Ahsoka won’t exactly be riding off into the sunset together in the end, so just keep that in mind ig lol
> 
> Anyways! Here y'all go, and hope you enjoy.

Maul doesn’t sleep. Not on purpose, at least—he doesn’t try to sleep, he doesn’t try to stay awake. There is little point in bodily sustainability when there is little point in existence.

Streaks of hyperspace flicker before his eyes. Once in a while, on its own strange clock amidst the absence of time, his body shuts down, and the lights take to prancing around him in a mocking roundelay. They turn to yellow, green, then all the colors of the visible spectrum; they sizzle and swirl and shape into faces, places, send echoes of sensations to vibrate in his joints and vertebrae.

He dreams of Dathomir. Lotho Minor. The smoldering agony of both body and mind. The bacta sizzling over charred flesh, the pull of metal and magick, the weightless crushing of the Force. He sleeps but he doesn’t rest, and when he opens his eyes, it takes him slow moments and effortful blinks to bring the white and blue back into clarity.

 _I am losing edge,_ he thinks. _Deplorable. But not surprising._

Somehow, he can’t find it in him to care.

On occasion, the Force nudges him in reminder that he isn’t alone.

The Togrutan girl stopped asking where they’re going—or anything else, for that matter. She hasn’t showed in the cockpit since, she sits somewhere in the rear of the shuttle and grieves.

If he hones in on it, Maul can practically taste her misery on his tongue. It’s potent enough to almost see it, too, with smears of color swirling and melding together into a vague image on the back of the eyelids. Strained angles and bends of her body as she curls in on herself with nothing else to latch on to. Hurt and shock like ropes and chains round her torso and limbs, stiffening, paralyzing, far too strong for an untrained mind to conquer and bend to its will.

Lack of discipline. Lack of control. Lack of _knowledge._

The distant, almost forgotten familiarity of it is disgusting.

*

There’s no telling how long it’s been since he’s last eaten, and he doesn’t give it much thought until the headache settles into permanence in his skull and lights begin to swim in front of his eyes even more than before.

Pushing through his head’s spinning is a struggle. Movement, in itself, is a struggle. Somehow, he manages to force his steel shanks to hold his weight and carry him to the shuttle’s emergency reserves, where he quickly scans the meager selection of rations and finds it untouched.

Faintly, he senses Tano nearby. Out of sight, and remarkably quiet in the Force. Dormant.

Not sleeping, however—vigilant.

The crunch of the ration bar’s wrapper is harsh and loud on the ears in the thrumming silence, there’s no doubt she hears it. One portion goes down without so much as a trace; Maul gulps down another just to get the sensation of having eaten at least something. It does almost nothing. Empty calories of no taste, no weight.

He might not feel the benefit, but if it helps to make his head stop spinning eventually, he reasons, it isn’t really a waste.

The next time he makes himself eat—hours later, it feels like—the rations lie just as he left them.

Tano’s presence in the Force is not only quiet, now, but... dim. Maul imagines it isn’t anything particularly deliberate on her part: it’s the state of being stuck, caught in the vacuum of thoughts amidst the cosmos’s nothingness. No outlet for the anguish that, ergo, gets quickly stripped of its strength and drained of its fuel. Pain that, with nowhere to go, turns hollow and defeatist. Despair of a detached, uninvolved nature.

A rather natural reaction, for one so unaccustomed to such things.

It’s exhausting to try to figure out why he didn’t finish her off, why she’s on the ship in the first place, so Maul doesn’t bother. Time will tell how to deal with all of this.

Could she be of use? Hardly.

He takes another bite, then throws a glance over the rest of the food before grabbing a bar to take back to the cockpit for later. The reserves aren’t much, but can last them a little while with proper rationing. And if Tano won’t eat—well, then. More for him.

She can starve herself for all he cares.

*

When that face of blue-eyed arrogance, so familiar after years of being envisioned, invades his dreams just as the countless times before, he welcomes it like an old friend.

Gleeful wrath sparks up on reflex, fills him up instantly, easily, and he welcomes that, too.

It doesn’t take long for the vision’s smugness and bravado to dissolve into despondence. Greying beard, emerging wrinkles; tortured, distant look in the eyes. Exhaustion. Defeat. Kenobi kneeling on the throne room’s floor, staring blankly at his own fragmented reflection in the glass inlay, and not even trying to hang on to his will to live.

A mental relic of the past. One to treasure, certainly—but that was then.

It could have been now. 

Should have been. But he didn’t show, and now—

Gone.

Just like that. 

Just like that, the Jedi are gone. And what is left? 

What now?

*

Her presence long since tuned out, Maul remembers with a slight start that he isn’t alone when Tano shows in the cockpit again.

He isn’t sure how long she spent wringing herself out like a sponge, and, he imagines, neither is she, but it’s obvious she was thorough with it. A cursory glance is more than enough to gather her paled complexion, bloodshot eyes, hollow stare.

Exhaustion—good. There won’t be any more blubbering any time soon.

She’s armed, but her weapons hang at her hips. She stands a few strides away for a couple of minutes before finally lowering herself onto the very edge of the copilot’s seat, with her back held rigid and straight.

No matter how hard she tries to appear calm and detached, she can’t seem to ease the trembling tension in her fingers. When Maul closes his eyes and focuses his senses, that tension begins to almost take on form and weight.

Despite it, Tano’s voice is steady when she speaks. Quiet and hoarse with at least a standard rotation’s worth of disuse, but steady.

“Deeper into the Outer Rim,” she mutters. “It’s not hard to guess. But where exactly?”

Nearly soundlessly, without opening his eyes, Maul huffs.

She huffs in turn. “Do you even know?”

“There’s no easy way of finding you if you’ve no destination.”

“So you don’t know.”

“And I don’t want to know.”

She falls silent. The anxious thrumming within her grows louder. 

“How can you just... run?”

Maul opens his eyes to find her staring blankly ahead, into nothing, hands held close to her body in her lap.

A rhetorical question, surely. All the same, he feels like scoffing once again.

Such ignorance of what they’re up against. Such righteous simplicity. He could almost envy it.

“Is that not precisely what you did on Mandalore?”

Tense fingers curl into fists, lips tighten. Tano’s words are slow, as if she’s making conscious effort to keep them steady. 

“That was a necessary immediate response.”

“Ah.” Maul nods as if that hasn’t even crossed his mind. “Of course.”

She sucks in a subtle breath and straightens up her spine even more; raising her chin just a notch makes her shoulders twitch upwards as well, for how stiff they are.

Trying so hard, the poor thing.

“Do you know how the cycle of bloodsniffers and nightswifts maintains balance?”

As if pulled out of a slight trance, she blinks and responds with an unfavorably arched brow.

“The nightswift,” Maul continues almost instantly, without meeting her side-eye, “is naturally faster than the bloodsniffer, and can outrun it with ease. But, in spite of it, bloodsniffers don’t starve. In fact, their population is thriving; they find no difficulty in catching up to their prey despite the disadvantage before it. Do you know why?”

Tano’s frown deepens into befuddled exasperation, but, nonetheless, she replies with reluctance: “…Nightswifts are an infamously stupid species.”

“Yes, but how so? What is it they do that dooms them?” Maul holds a short pause until the other huffs out a quiet, apathetic sigh. “The issue is that their fight-or-flight response is merely a fleeting tactic, not a strategy. It shuts off too quickly, too soon they drop their guard and give in to the delusion of safety. The delusion of safety that bloodsniffers recognize and eagerly exploit—naturally, the best target for an ambush is an ignorant one. 

“The bloodsniffer lets the nightswift go, patiently waits—not for long at all, really—until it lets down its guard, then quietly seeks it out... And so, all too soon, blood is drawn from the poor beast’s throat.”

Tano’s voice is deadpan. “This is hardly an appropriate metaphor.”

“Oh? I think there’s a great deal that the animalia can teach us.”

“That’s a different situation. And we aren’t nightswifts.”

“Indeed—but then it’s only fitting to act like it, no?”

She sighs once more, and with the drawn-out exhale her body—only slightly, movements still controlled—deflates against the back of her chair. The flickering lights throw her face into contrast, accentuate the subtle beginnings of laugh lines and the lingering puffiness around her eyes as she stares blank and half-lidded out the viewport.

“Not act like animals, huh?” after a long stretch of silence, she mutters under her breath. Practically inaudible, clearly not meant to be heard. “Yeah. You would know.”

Maul hears, and tactically pretends otherwise.

*

He has nothing to say to her, she has nothing to say to him—they sit in silence. Tuning out the ship’s hum and his co-passenger’s presence in the Force once more, Maul closes his eyes and brings his mind to a still state of limbo to help pass the time.

He tunes out his own thoughts, as well; but, after what seems to be close to an hour, Tano denies him that privilege.

“Will he be looking for you?” she asks.

Maul blinks his eyes open and considers the question, as if he hasn't mulled over this very same one many a time already.

Being unable to allow any opposition to remain, Sidious, it seems, has every reason to try and hunt him down. In that sense, it’s a bit of a mutual disadvantage that the man knows firsthand, like no one else, the persistence Maul is capable of.

It’s what he went to great lengths to beat into his pupil, after all.

“I am not taking chances.”

He entertains no delusions—he was simply allowed to escape after the murder of Mother. Sidious must have counted on the Jedi to box him in on Mandalore, and then—kill two mynocks in one blast. Catch him in the crossfire. 

How unfortunate for the old man, Maul thinks with teeth clenched, that such negligence doesn’t fly with him.

Perhaps, after their parting on Dathomir, Sidious began to underestimate him. Consider him less of a threat, with no more blood ties backing him. That is a desired outcome if ever there was one, and yet Maul can’t help the spark of ire that ignites in the pit of his throat. 

Still, Sidious knows he’s alive. His and Tano’s escape is no secret by any means.

Sidious knows his plan wasn’t as successful as he hoped, and he will not be able to stand for it.

“You’ll be hunted, as well,” Maul remarks, almost like an afterthought. Tano tries not to tense up, but he hears it in the air still. “Just like the rest. Whoever’s still alive. So if you want to help your fellow Jedi so desperately—”

“I’m not one of them.”

“Oh, yes, the way you weep for them makes that so clear.” She winces slightly, clenches her jaw, and he scoffs out a sigh. “Tano, I could also begin to tell you all about how I no longer consider myself Sith, but we would just be wasting each other’s time.”

“My name,” she grates, “is Ahsoka.”

“Charmed. But you’re missing the point.”

Tano bristles, but Maul ignores her. “It doesn’t matter what you wish to believe yourself to be—there is a certain way you were raised, thus, there is a certain way you are perceived, and such is your identity, whether you like it or not. You may have left the institution, but you know full well the Jedi are more than that.”

As he’s sure she already had a chance to discover for herself, one does not leave their way of life so easily.

“You say you aren’t one of them, and yet you still feel for them so strongly despite all the ways they’ve wronged you.”

Tano shifts in her seat, summons a colder edge to her tone. “I don’t know what it is you think you know,” she says slowly, “but you don’t know me.”

“I know enough to see that you’re still tied down.”

“Tied— tied down?!” She whips her head around to shoot him a momentary glare of disbelief. “I— Wow.” A scoff pushes out of her chest, no doubt an attempt to mask the stammering that begins to shake her voice. The cracks in her composure grow and show the despair that’s only barely been kept at bay, rather than the air of insulted incredulity she seemed to be aiming for. “That’s _not_ it, I just feel—” 

Jerky, uncontrolled gestures unwittingly attempt to compensate for the words she can’t bring herself to voice. “I’m— _devastated_ because they— Because they didn’t deserve to be—”

Her lips begin to tremble and she presses them together, clenches her hands into fists and her eyes into hard blinks.

“Butchered?” Maul quietly suggests.

Tano chokes out a dry sob.

No doubt that, in the long hours spent alone with her thoughts, her subconsciousness conjured up the most haunting visuals she can handle.

Maul holds out a pause, giving her a chance to try and fail to pull herself together. When he speaks again, he keeps his voice low and level, carefully goading. 

“Slaughtered like swine? Stamped out like insects? Disposed of?”

The silence is heavy and thick.

It stretches on and on, and Maul waits patiently for Tano to eventually break it herself with a long, tattered breath.

Her whisper is frail, devoid of any strength, but it is more than enough.

“Yes.”

Feeling a modicum of vague satisfaction, letting the response speak for itself, Maul only inclines his head.

“But not all of them.”

“Hm?”

Tano’s eyes are large as it is, and they seem even more so now, when she fixes them on him in an unclear mix of determination, helplessness, desperation, and scorn. 

“Not all of them are gone,” she says slowly. She almost manages to sound assured.

“Oh, certainly. If you survived, I’m sure there’re at least a few others out there.”

A rather nonchalant affirmation, but something under the sternum gives a soft thunk. It shouldn’t take him by surprise, but still does, and Maul does his best to reroute his attention elsewhere.

However, the pathetic, unwarranted attempt at dumb faith is quick to slip through the slits of its confinement and float back up to the surface before he can grasp it.

Kenobi might still be alive.

He’s a powerful Jedi. Too arrogant for his own good, of course, but not stupid. There is a chance—

_Pathetic._

_There is nothing left. No Jedi. No Kenobi. Nothing._

_Only Sidious. Only Sidious and his empire._

His focus blurs, and he no longer registers the color and light before his eyes. He’s in the Spire again, it’s cold and clinically bright, and the stench of _his_ sway is consuming and overwhelming. One second, another—and, as if by a snap of _his_ fingers, the cold is replaced with smothering heat, and he smells burning coal and chokes on the all-too-familiar taste of ash.

Beyond _him,_ these places have no existence. Not anymore. Completely and utterly overpowered, dominated by _his_ influence, marred by _his_ footprints. 

Oh to wipe these planets off the face of the galaxy. To burn away the rot.

Destroy everything _he_ has ever touched, take it all away.

_You took him from me. You took my revenge from me._

_I had nothing else for you to take, and yet you took even more._

_You killed them all, but one yet lives. You still stand. For now._

“Maul?”

The white and blue of hyperspace is comforting on the eyes when he blinks them open. He allows himself a fuller sigh as he looks on into the swirling and unending distance, takes a moment to breathe as he thinks of his old Master, of his soundless whispers filling every nook reachable by shadow.

He is everywhere. He will be looking. And all there is to do is run.

The sound of a quiet but sharp exhale nudges Maul further back to reality. A glance to the side finds Tano looking at him with intent suspicion.

He blinks at her. “I’m sorry?”

She holds her frown for a moment, then relaxes her brow—but smidgens of apprehension remain in her eyes. 

“No, nothing.”

Though, after a long while, she breaks the silence again.

“You, uh... You were saying something.” She frowns at the floor and chews on her bottom lip. “About helping Jedi survivors.”

There’s an air of forced detachment to her tone. Thinly veiled discontent from having to resort to talk to him of all people about this, no doubt—Maul inwardly huffs. 

“I was saying that if you really want to help them,” he replies, “the best thing you can do for them is stay away.”

 _“Ah.”_ The detachment immediately shatters as Tano spits out an acrid scoff. “I don’t know what I expected.”

“You asked for my opinion.”

“Yeah, for the first and last time.” She falls back against the chair, crosses her arms, and gives a light shake of her head in scornful incredulity. “Unlike some people, I don’t intend for them to die out, thank you very much. All your efforts be damned, the Jedi will endure. We will regroup. We’re strong in numbers. With organization. We could rebuild.”

“And make it ridiculously easy for Sidious to send in his army of lackeys to wipe you out in one stroke.” 

Tano frowns, shoots him a side-eye, and Maul arches a brow. “Right now, Sidious is at the peak of his power, and with the Force so silent, the echoes of rare Jedi will ring louder than ever. The Jedi are broken, weak—being out in the open so early into Sidious’s reign would be suicide. Remember, he isn’t stupid, but he only has so many eyes. So don’t let him see you. Wait for the right moment to strike. And until then, while you still have that chance—scatter. Hide.”

Make it easy to be picked off one by one.

“These are dark times, Lady Tano. This is Sidious’s domain, he is its master, and if you want to survive, for a while, you have to play by his rules. Don’t let him draw you out.”

The disdain in Tano’s eyes—that, surprisingly, she’s yet to pull away—yields to concern. What’s more, Maul can sense his words being given genuine, albeit tentative, thought, and that brings him strange satisfaction.

“And you know this from experience,” Tano murmurs after a long moment, and it isn’t exactly a question.

“All too well.”

She’s silent for a while. Maul can see the clear progression from doubt to contemplation on her face; the grim, reluctant determination settling in her expression.

When she speaks again, she sounds uncertain. A tad hesitant. “So… For now, you’re just going as far away as possible.”

“Correct.”

“And… you do realize you’ll have to make a stop somewhere eventually, right?”

“Of course. After this scrap heap of a vessel gets us as far as it can, it’ll need to be replaced.”

Preferably, with something that doesn’t scream “Republic.” 

“...Buy a ship?” Tano frowns skeptically. “With what?”

Maul scoffs softly. No one said anything about buying. Although...

He flits his eyes to her and briskly runs them over her form. 

A fine young woman. A trained Jedi, at that. Though a bit worn down at the moment, she’d still easily fetch a hefty sum on the black market.

But the black markets are the last place he should be showing his face right now.

He taps his fingers on the armrest in an annoyed rattle. Crimson Dawn isn‘t to be trusted yet, especially in these circumstances, and the Collective practically fell out of the equation already. Tensions have been rising, and this is the last straw—they won’t exactly greet him with open arms when they receive word of how he left Saxon’s men high and dry. Assuming, of course, that anyone survived to tell the tale. There’s an advantage mercenary factions entertain, he’ll give them that—with such flexibility of allegiance, it’s not hard for them to pull through amid chaos.

And in circles that know no honor, a king dethroned is a king no longer.

But it’s no matter. That throne is as easily claimed as it is lost. All in due time—when he’s back on his feet, when the moment is right.

For now, though, one small step at a time.

“With some improvisation, naturally.”

Tano doesn’t look exactly satisfied with the answer, but also doesn’t press for a better one.

“How much fuel?” she asks instead.

“At the rate we’re going, a few rotations’ worth.”

Several standard rotations of uninterrupted hyperspace travel—that will get them far. Not bad at all, for a head start.

Perhaps, within this time, he might arrive at some idea of a plan. Figure out how, if in any way whatsoever, Tano fits in it. The Force works in mysterious ways—it can’t be entirely by chance that they ended up like this. Having her on hand might prove useful.

If not, well, she can always be disposed of later. But there’s no harm in waiting and seeing.

One step a time. It’s all incredibly straightforward. 

Get a little bit farther. Land a stop. Get the most out of it and take off again.

And then, disappear.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jfc, the semester ended and I'm finally (sort of) free. I've been dying to get back to this for the past month--so here it is, and hopefully updates will be coming out a bit faster now :^)

When the appetite returns to her, it does so with a vengeance, and the rations start going fast.

Maul glowers and spits venom. _Yes, gorge yourself, why don’t you. See how long the supplies last._

 _You have no right to chew me out, let alone judge me,_ Ahsoka would retort if there were any point in speaking with him. _Everyone I know may be either dead or missing. I’ll eat if I frakking have to._

There wasn’t enough food to last even a few days, anyway. Running out quickly was inevitable.

But even when all of it is gone, Maul refuses to take the ship out of hyperspace.

 _You did this,_ he hisses with such great reproach one could think she’s the only one who’s ever taken from the supply. _We stop only when we’re out of fuel. Enjoy the rest of the ride._

*

It isn’t the first time that Ahsoka had to go without food for longer than normal or acceptable, but she doesn’t recall ever feeling so hungry.

So hungry and so impossibly alone.

In her quiet spot on the shuttle, she can do nothing but wait, and in hopes of distraction she mentally replays Maul’s words and tries to find holes in his logic. Keep your distance from the Jedi, he said. Absurd—that’s what it should sound like. The situation isn’t as dire as he claims, surely. It can’t be.

But the fact that she can’t fully wrap her mind around any of it doesn’t keep the fear from creeping into her bones.

 _Do you not feel it?_ The questions her subconscious involuntarily summons remind her vaguely of Maul’s. _Do you not hear the Dark Side? Do you not feel how strong it is? How thick and poignant?_

The answers are terrifying. She sees it, a spot of blinding light that grows and eats away at the vision, threatening to reach the retina as it inches closer. It isn’t clear, but it’s undeniably, dreadfully present. 

It’s just the closeness of Maul in the Force, she tells herself, but attempts at self-assurance are weak and vain. No, this is so much bigger than him. It’s so much bigger than the both of them.

And if Sidious will be looking for Maul, as the latter confirmed earlier, then she needs to get away. Even it there were no threat of a new galactic order hanging over their shoulders, she would never stay near him a moment longer than necessary. Let him do as he pleases, because as soon as she gets the chance, she will go her own way and forget all of this.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

The fuel depletes nearly in full in only a couple rotations. At last Maul tears the ship out of hyperspace, and the expanse of space is so dark by comparison to the missing lights it’s startling.

They find themselves deep in the Corporate Sector. The scanners are dead silent for a good half hour, and then suddenly beep with alarm as the radar picks up on a planet.

Ahsoka peers at the navicomputer. Erysthes. Wetland. 

Maul leans closer, furrows his brows into a thoughtful expression as he gathers the same information.

“Perfect,” he says under his breath.

*

If anyone saw how a Republic shuttle fell from the sky and plunged straight into the river, at full speed, with no hope of safe retrieval, they would call it an unfortunate crash indeed.

Thankfully, there seemed to be no one around for klicks to witness it—and thus no one around to spot the two figures saving themselves from the ship’s tragic fate by jumping off it from an impossible height.

Huttese expletives out of Anakin’s lexicon spill from Ahsoka’s lips as she spits out the dirty water the splashes brought to her mouth. She finds her footing in the sludge at the bottom, straightens up fully, and with relief notes that the pool is only waist-deep. Immediately her hands fly to her hips to lift her lightsabers above the surface—grimacing, she waves in the water in front of herself, tearing through the green, soup-like blanket of duckweed and string algae with her fingers to create something of a clearing for cleaning her weapons.

As well as virtually everything else.

But it’s a largely futile effort, and Ahsoka does her best to swipe clumps of scum off the metal before realizing that she’s only adding more with her duckweed-covered fingers. So she gives up, opting to simply hold the sabers above the surface and not aggravate the situation.

With a sigh lodged in her throat, she turns to the scene of the crash behind her and watches as the river slowly swallows the shuttle whole.

Well—at least _something_ went right.

The sound of fussing makes Ahsoka turn back around to the sight of Maul standing in the same waist-deep waters a few meters away. With a light scowl he swats the flies away from his face, and then casts his gaze downward and begins to unclasp the bracers on his arms.

“You son of a murglak,” Ahsoka growls, completely dismissive of the tiny voice in the back of her mind reminding her just whom she’s flinging insults at without thinking. It doesn’t seem to matter, though—to add on to his unamused expression, in response Maul does nothing but shoot her an arched brow. “Could have at least warned me.”

“And what would that have changed?”

Nothing, Ahsoka mentally admits with gritted teeth as she takes a moment to look around. No dry land in sight, only marsh. No trees or hills or ditches, either—just shrubs and reeds and pond scum. Not like there’s much else to expect on the fringe of a river in a wetlands.

As much as she hates to agree, given what they had to work with, there was no better place to hide a Republic military spacecraft than at the bottom of said river.

Turns out, that comes with a bit of a high dive.

“Alright,” she slides one of her lightsabers between her ribs and left elbow, squeezing it in place so that she can have both hands free to work on cleaning the other one, “what does your grand plan have us do next?”

Because they couldn’t pick coordinates in advance to ensure a better landing, obviously.

“Well,” Maul takes off his bracers and simply drops them to float on the water’s surface, and it peeves Ahsoka that he doesn’t rise to the bite in her voice, “the only rational thing we can do now is follow the river downstream.”

The planet is clearly habitable, so it’s plausible to come upon civilization at one point or another. Still, Ahsoka wishes either of them had a datapad with a GPS on hand.

Assuming this theoretical datapad would stay functional after the jump they performed.

“We should try to get out of the marsh, at least,” she mutters as she shakes a greenish-brown clump of algae off her fingers. Maul pulls off his muddy gloves in the meantime, plops them carelessly into the soupy water, and Ahsoka casts him a sidelong look. 

“Ah, I see you certainly aren’t leaving a trace after yourself.”

“Well, I don’t know know about you, Lady Tano, but I don’t exactly fancy the idea of trekking in the sun while dressed in garb that’s crusted with mire.” There is a vague tinge of disgust in Maul’s tone. He tugs the ends of his tabards out from under his belt, pulls the wide leather bands off and flings them into the nearby reed before switching his attention to his shoulder pads. “By the time anyone finds all this, we’ll be long gone. This way is better than showing up in the open looking distinctly like battle-torn lunatics. Even with all the… dirt,” he flits his eyes to Ahsoka and gives a slight nod in her direction, “you, for instance, still look like a soldier.”

“Yeah, and the alternative is looking like regular lunatics,” she grunts in reply, to which Maul merely shrugs. “Because looking—and smelling—like a couple of swamp-dwelling banthas is, as everyone knows, the definition of keeping a low profile.”

“Tano, if you had any better ideas, I would have loved to hear them earlier. I’m afraid you’re a bit overdue on that front.”

“Oh, is that so? I don’t recall you even considering to just pick a better planet to land on at an earlier time.”

“We would have still had to dispose of the shuttle, and that would have been a waste of fuel.”

Ahsoka huffs, clicks her tongue, and, momentarily pausing the cleaning, squeezes her second lightsaber at the other side of her body to begin unclasping her gauntlets instead. Cloth and plastoid and useless comlink soon float before her; the kama goes next, then the knee pads, the clasps of which are easy enough to blindly undo underwater. It’s a bit of a heavy heart with which the gear comes off, but Ahsoka bitterly swallows down the sentiment. She won’t have need of this kind of armor if she’s going to pose as a civilian.

The headpiece, though, makes her pause.

Gingerly, Ahsoka holds it in her hands, runs her finger pads over the worn edges of the metal and the twin vertical yellow stripes denoting rank.

This belonged to someone. Some woman's accomplishments and merit earned her the honor of wearing these stripes on her temples once, and here Ahsoka was about to toss it like a piece of scrap.

It’s arguable whether she deserved to be granted this headpiece. It’s arguable whether Bo-Katan deserved to grant it to her, appoint an outsider to the duty of protecting the very people she herself had once terrorized. It was merely a formality, of course, but it was a place in the Nite Owl ranks nonetheless. Bo simply needed reinforcements, she didn’t need to make Ahsoka feel even remotely welcome.

And Ahsoka brought the clones to their planet. The clones that wrecked the historic Palace, as if all the preceding destruction wasn’t enough. The clones that likely turned on the Mandalorians following Ahsoka’s escape, causing even more collateral damage in attempts of finding her, or punishing the cooperators—or both.

Perhaps it’s a fitting outcome, as history has shown the Mandalorian record to be nothing but a cycle of rises and falls. Like always, Mandalore will endure and survive, that Ahsoka is sure of… 

But, Force, why did everything have to happen like _this?_

There are no answers, no logical explanations. Ahsoka blinks, pulls in a long breath, and carefully sets the headpiece down on the water’s surface. The thin band of metal slowly sinks through and disappears under the blanket of green.

“Something is on your mind,” without even looking at her, Maul remarks conversationally as he clumps up his sodden and soiled undertunic and plops it into the water, and anger flares before Ahsoka’s eyes.

 _How can anything_ not _be on my mind?_ she almost shoots back, but her tongue doesn’t turn in her mouth and she’s left glaring at a red-and-black shoulder blade, trying to burn a hole in the flesh.

This... man who trapped them all here. This man because of whom Ahsoka went to Mandalore in the first place, putting herself and others at risk of a Sith Lord’s conspiracy and cutting herself off from Anakin and the others in peril. This man who’s entirely convinced he has done no wrong.

Everything keeps falling apart, and there are only a few to blame for it. 

Maul takes to rinsing his lightsaber as if he didn’t even say anything at all, seemingly uncaring about the lack of response. Ahsoka numbs the twinge of disappointment with the tightening of her lips.

Mud is easy to come by; it’s slimy enough to stick when Ahsoka smears a clump over her sternum, rubbing it into the fabric to conceal the Iron Heart. She then pushes her floating gear into the shrubs, and, without so much as a look over her shoulder, turns with the river’s current and starts on her way.

*

A few hours of wading through thick marsh finally gets them to more or less dry land, and only then does Ahsoka realize just how much her quads and calves burn. 

Clumps of long grass help a bit in lifting some of the moisture and wiping excesses of muck away from their hands and legs. Ahsoka shucks off her boots, flips them over to pour out the water, does her best in cleaning the interior of the necks. Hisses at the squelching cold when she tries to put one back on, and opts to continue barefoot for the time being. 

She watches out of the corner of her eye, careful not to stare, how Maul bleakly, painstakingly digs lumps and strings of algae out of the crevices and mechanisms of his prosthetic legs. 

He resolutely keeps up the silence they’ve been holding for more than an hour, showing no clear outward signs of irritability, but Ahsoka senses the frustration.

She doesn’t focus on it for long. It’s as good a time as any to finish properly cleaning her lightsabers and Ahsoka settles her attention on just that, trying to find a distraction from how wet and tired and hungry she is, and from the thick fog of gloom she can’t see through.

*

Erysthes’s rotation period is unknown to either of them, but it takes a few more hours of trudging through grasses and damp plains, keeping the river in sight, until the sun merely reaches its peak in the sky.

Something appears in the faraway distance; soon, they come upon a road, and the settlement a few klicks downhill grows clearer in sight.

“Farmland,” Maul mutters contemplatively, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand. “A community of fringers, likely.”

Ahsoka squints and takes in the laid-out fields of vegetation stretching far into the distance. The community appears to be a small town, even village, and doesn’t look too promising in terms of technology.

Which makes things a bit harder.

“I just want to know how exactly you plan on getting out of here,” she says, and it surprises her how exhausting it is to simply speak at this point.

“It would do you well to learn to appreciate the unexpected, Lady Tano.”

Ahsoka scoffs and shoots Maul a glance. “Really? You, a manipulator who brought two—or was it three?—functional crime syndicates to heel and took over a planet, are going to tell me about the uses of unexpected chance?”

At that, Maul lets out a genuine chuckle. Ahsoka shoots up her brows in surprise, but the mirth vanishes as quickly as it appeared, replaced with exhaustion that seeps through his next words. “Yes, well, that is the key to adaptability.”

Well—if anyone should know anything about that, it would be Maul; that, judging by everything she’s heard, Ahsoka can’t argue with.

Still, the lack of obvious transport threatens to make the plan of wandering off on her own a little more complicated than she’d like. But, until she gets some food in her stomach, there’s no use in worrying about that.

*

She doesn’t know how long it’s gone on for, maybe she simply hasn’t been paying attention—but at a certain point she begins to take note of Maul’s limp.

It’s slight. Nearly invisible to the naked eye. But Ahsoka has seen this man fight, up close, at that, and anything out of the ordinary in his usually fluid movements feels downright jolting. 

Suddenly she’s faced with the brutal fact that these legs, prosthetic as they may be, are not, in fact, a natural extension of him.

Maul says nothing, exhibits no reaction. After a while, though, over a series of furtive glances, Ahsoka gathers that he’s aware of the handicap.

Aware and trying to hide it.

His right leg falls just a hair behind, on account of that knee taking a longer time to bend than the left. Perhaps something got lodged in the joint, Ahsoka thinks. Or maybe a screw went loose and got stuck the wrong way. The fact that they waded through waist-deep water for hours in the first place lends little optimism to the situation.

Some time later, with just a klick or so left, Maul turns off the road.

“We can’t show up with these,” in response to Ahsoka’s questions, he unclips his lightsaber from his belt and shakes it lightly. “We will hide them.”

“This far away?”

“The farther, the better.”

Ahsoka stops in her tracks, rubs her eyes with the clean sides of her wrists—in exhaustion, or vexation, or both. “Isn’t that a bit paranoid?”

“That,” Maul turns around to face her, and exasperation begins to grow in his gradually straining voice, “is a small settlement we’re about to enter, where, I expect, everyone knows one another. So it’s bad enough that we will inherently draw attention by simply being outsiders, but, as you yourself pointed out earlier, our appearance raises suspicion. And with this,” he lifts his lightsaber to accentuate the word, and were Ahsoka standing closer he would have probably shoved it in her face, “you might as well be painting a target on your forehead.”

Ahsoka lets her arms drop and pushes a tired sigh out of her chest. “Fine. Fine.”

“Oh, worry not,” Maul scoffs acridly as he comes up to a large rock and swipes the ground before it with the soles of his feet. “When we’re ready to leave— or, even, if we come across a couple of cloaks or a sack, we’ll come back to get them.”

 _We, we, we._ Ahsoka deliberately walks around the rock to its opposite side, squats down with a harsh groan of her muscles, and begins tearing out clumps of grass to clear a patch of ground for easier hand-digging.

Why Maul seems to be intent on sticking together, she doesn’t know.

Not that it matters. He can think what he likes—in the end, as long as she has anything to say about it, their paths are their own.

*

The lightsabers are buried, their hiding spot is committed to memory… and the settlement is buzzing with mellow life. It looks more like a worker base than a town—people live here, as evident by a couple dozen or so apartment buildings nearby, but the modesty of the main street and the overall closeness to the road speaks of either the town’s newness or its location’s impermanence.

 _Although,_ Ahsoka thinks as she takes in the green fields on the other side of the road that stretch all the way to the river, _the latter isn’t very likely._

Farmers can be seen in the distance, working in the fields, operating various forms of machinery. The town itself isn’t packed in the middle of the day, but the main street is buzzing with chatter from people running their own businesses—merchants, mostly, that have come to profit off the workers.

Wetland farmers as these people may be, haphazard garb with a head-to-toe dried layer of marsh muck is clearly not a look they’re used to, and so Ahsoka resolutely avoids the many looks she and Maul draw to themselves as they trudge by.

One of the largest structures is a sort of cantina, or more of a diner. The distinction means nothing in face of the promise of food, and Ahsoka barely even notices several pairs of eyes turning in their direction as they stumble in through the door.

A stout Mythrol woman behind the counter scowls and grimaces as the two come nearer, and then exclaims in her bellowing, heavily-accented Basic:

“Whaddaya two barves think you’re doing, dragging mud into the place?”

Ahsoka tightens her lips and looks around. To be fair, the place isn’t that clean in the first place, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the customers at their tables who are suddenly taking great interest in the scene playing out at the front.

“You come here for food, well I ain’t giving you none! We don’t take kindly to beggars around here, I tell you that.”

“We aren’t beggars,” Ahsoka says, and never mind that the other may very well be correct in identifying them as such. Ahsoka keeps her voice level and quiet, in hopes of getting the woman to also lower her voice. 

But the hint falls on deaf gills. 

“That right?” the woman drawls at full volume and lays her meaty arm on the counter, leaning over to glower at Ahsoka up close. _“Credits up front.”_

“We paid you already,” a voice even lower than Ahsoka’s says, and she glances over at Maul as he, too, places his elbow on the counter and takes a moment to stifle a tired sigh. He flicks a quick glance over his shoulder at the people that are still intently watching the scene, clearly starved of entertainment in their daily lives. Nearly imperceptibly, he tightens his lips and then turns back to the Mythrol woman. 

Ahsoka almost misses the small, fluid wave of his hand that he doesn’t even lift from the counter.

Oh.

“You want to serve us meals,” Maul mutters levelly under his breath, and the woman’s grimace morphs into a pleasant, mellow expression.

“Ah, you folks already paid, didn’t you?” She straightens up from the counter and slides her eyes over to Maul. “Now, how can I help you?”

“Varlaynee,” someone calls out from the back, and Ahsoka turns and locks eyes with a Weequay man sitting across the room. He’s balancing his chair on its back legs and twirling a fork in his hand as he slowly moves his narrowed gaze from Ahsoka to Maul and back—and then over to Maul again. “Them mudcrutches givin’ you trouble, hon?”

“Oh, no, Gordo dear, don’t you worry,” the woman gives so-called Gordo a wide, beaming smile. The latter keeps his eyes steady on Maul’s back, then curls his lip and slowly runs his tongue over the top row of his teeth. “So what would you two like?”

Maul throws a blank glance at a meager menu list on the wall behind her. “A bowl of stew with a side of rice for me, and—” he turns to Ahsoka and raises a brow in invitation.

“Uh,” Ahsoka turns away from Gordo’s theatrical display and quickly skims the same list, but her growling stomach refuses to let her think to the point of the written words not making sense. “Same for me. And some water.”

“Water cooler’s over there,” Varlaynee gestures to the side and pushes herself off the counter. “Double serving of fish stew and rice, gotcha. Coming right up!”

With relief, Ahsoka takes note of how the place gradually comes alive with chatter and clank of utensils as customers lose interest in the strangers and go back to their food and conversations. She spies a couple of empty tables in the back, and leans on the counter with her side as they wait.

Her eyes wander over to Maul. How he drums his fingers idly on the counter’s wood, and— how he’s putting all his weight on his left leg.

Ahsoka glances the prosthetics over. They’re crude, a bit clunky—though one wouldn’t be able to tell without seeing up close.

Maul’s brow and mouth are tense, and, well. It isn’t hard to guess why.

 _That’s what you get,_ she thinks, _for diving into swamps, you choffer._

Varlaynee soon returns with steaming bowls, and Ahsoka’s mouth waters so badly she forgets everything else and almost digs in then and there, right with her dirty hands. It must be only by the grace of the Force that she manages to retain control.

She’s ready to head to one of the empty tables with her food when Maul gives voice again.

“You’re the owner of this establishment, are you not?”

“That’s right.” Varlaynee props her arms on the counter. “And what’s it to you?”

Once more, Maul’s hand stirs the air softly. He drops his voice ever lower, practically down to a whisper. “You want to give us access to your lodgings out back. _Quietly._ Put the keys on the counter.”

Ahsoka watches, dumbstruck, as the woman reaches into the pocket of her pants, pulls out a key, and places it next to the bowls of food. 

“Enjoy your meal,” she says with a slight smile, for once at a normal volume, before walking off to return to her chores.

“What the hell,” Ahsoka hisses under her breath when words return to her, watching as Maul discreetly takes the key off the counter, “do you think you’re doing?”

The response comes only when they get to their table and make sure that no one seems to be paying attention or trying to eavesdrop. A shadow of vexation crosses Maul’s features at the dull, nearly inaudible click of his knee when he lowers himself into a chair (definitely a stuck screw, probably loosened by some algae and then angled the wrong way, Ahsoka passingly thinks), but he quickly gets ahold of himself and slides the key over the table, to the opposite side. “If you want to clean yourself up,” he says, quiet but casual, as he settles in his seat and fixes his attention on his food, “this is your chance.”

Ahsoka balks, though takes care to keep her voice low. “By invading someone’s privacy?!”

“I didn’t notice any boarding house on the way here, did you?”

Ahsoka grits her teeth, furious at the fact that her exhaustion and overall grimy state threaten to outweigh her better judgment. She can’t help but flick her eyes over the people in the diner, catching occasional looks here and there, but ultimately deeming the sector clear. Gordo, though, resolutely keeps his gaze on their table as he tries to pick his teeth with the prongs of a fork and look threatening while doing it—Ahsoka crinkles her nose and lets him be, bringing her eyes back to her food. “I— I can’t believe this,” she mutters, but as soon as a spoonful of hot stew enters her mouth, the exasperation pathetically evaporates and words turn into a low groan.

For a good few minutes of ravenous eating, all moral sense escapes her. The rice is gone before she even notices, and by the end of it she leans back in her chair and wonders just how much more she needs to eat in order to feel full again.

Still, she forces herself to pull her attention back to the small key before her. She scowls at it, then glowers across the table at Maul, who’s still taking his time with his food.

“What, you expect me to just walk in there and make myself at home?”

Maul lets out a small sigh. “I’m not sure what other option you have, unless, of course, you’re content with the shape you’re in?”

As low and despicable as it is, as much as she hates it, the idea of a shower is blissful enough to overshadow all common sense. Ahsoka purses her lips, quickly looks at Varlaynee over her shoulder, and turns back. 

“She’s gonna notice that her keys are gone,” she hisses.

“Well…” Maul gives a noncommittal shrug and then raises his eyes to fix them on Ahsoka’s in something of a challenge. “Best be quick.”

Ahsoka huffs, throws another quick glance at Varlaynee (as well as the other customers, for good measure), and then fixes Maul with one last glare before subtly swiping the key from the table and heading outside. 

When she finds that there is indeed an apartment out back, she wonders just how often Maul breaks into innkeepers’ homes. 

_Normally I would never do this,_ she tells herself as she invites herself in. _This is a dire case,_ she tells herself as her knees practically buckle at the sight of a bed and it takes the full force of her will to tear her eyes away. _I’m not causing any harm,_ she tells herself as she lets out an uncontrolled sigh of fulfillment when she finds a shower stall with clean, genuine water.

A small refresher’s mirror reveals a much more soiled appearance than she expected, and as her weary muscles relax under the warm spray, Ahsoka can only distantly hope that the drain doesn’t get clogged with all the duckweed running off her.

Slipping back into her muddy, greasy leggings and tunic afterwards couldn’t be more upsetting.

On the way back, she takes a small detour.

If Varlaynee takes note of the missing key, Ahsoka thinks, Maul will take care of it. This was his doing, after all.

The marketplace is small and fairly devoid of people aside from the merchants sitting at their stalls and chatting amongst one another. A few more buildings are sprinkled here and there along the street; at the edge of the marketplace a stables houses beasts of burden of peculiar sorts that Ahsoka hasn’t seen before.

A middle-aged man tinkers with a piece of farming equipment, kneeling on the dusty ground by the stables. Ahsoka approaches, idly sliding her eyes over the several different toolkits he’s surrounded by.

“Excuse me,” she calls, but the man doesn’t hear—or pretends not to hear—her over the clanks of his hammer. “Excuse me!”

After a few moments he turns his head and looks her up and down. Ahsoka’s brow twitches at his stare. “What do you want, girl?”

Oh, Ahsoka can imagine how this might look. A young, exhausted Togruta with nothing to her name aside from some strange dirty clothes, asking for…

“I was hoping you’d let me borrow a screwdriver?”

…a screwdriver, of all things.

The man looks her up and down once again and quirks up a bushy eyebrow. Then scoffs and turns back to his work. 

“Blow off, girl.”

Ahsoka quietly clicks her tongue.

“Sir, it’s for my speeder bike, it’s just a quick fix. I’ll bring it back before you know it.”

“I said, blow off!”

“I promise! I’m not gonna steal it.”

“Girl, are you deaf?! Shoo!”

Force. 

She’s so tired.

With a deep internal groan, Ahsoka rubs the bridge of her nose. _Fine,_ she thinks, and looks around to check that no one is close enough to see anything suspicious. _We’ll do this the hard way._

Squatting down next to the man puts them closer to eye level, and thus increases chances of success. 

“You want to give me a screwdriver,” she says softly, the words accompanied by a gentle wave of her hand, and the man immediately pulls away from his work, blinks a couple of times, and then turns to one of his toolkits.

“Tell you what.” His tone is infinitely more pleasant and polite this time around as he digs through his tools, before presenting her with what she asked for—a medium-sized screwdriver with a standard tip. “You can keep that one.”

Ahsoka takes the tool out of his hand, movements slow and cautious due to surprise. “Huh?”

“Keep it, keep it, I’ve got plenty.”

Huh. Well, then.

“Thanks,” she hesitantly says, making a mental promise to herself to bring the tool back.

When she returns to the diner, she throws a glance at Varlaynee to check that nothing is out of the ordinary, and slides back into her seat opposite of Maul.

His mood turned even sourer while she was gone, as evidenced by the way he was rubbing his temples when she walked in.

Ahsoka says nothing, just puts the key and screwdriver on the table in front of him, leans back against her chair and crosses her arms. 

Ready to take his turn in the shower, Maul takes the key, but scowls at the tool. 

“What’s this?”

“For your knee,” Ahsoka lifts a brow and grunts with a purposeful air of indifference. Perhaps he already forgot, though poorly attempted pretense of being in top shape is more likely. “Your parts look like standard production. The tip should fit.”

Maul’s frown remains, and he moves his jaw slightly as he flits his gaze from Ahsoka to the screwdriver and back. His eyes betray mistrust.

Ahsoka sits still for a few moments of expectancy and gives half a shrug, then stands up, takes her empty bowl, and walks back to the counter to Force-persuade Varlaynee to refill her serving for free.

When, after a minute, she glances over her shoulder, she finds the screwdriver gone and Maul’s chair empty.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you to lostsoul512 and bobbinredrobin for helping me with ideas cause sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing

Somehow, somewhere deep down, in what now seems an utterly ridiculous notion, Ahsoka might have thought that this is beneath him.

Evidently, it isn’t.

 _“Maul,”_ she hisses, and the wallet abruptly stops halfway on its crawl out of the pocket, though doesn’t slide back in. Maul has the audacity to roll his eyes before unkindly fixing them on Ahsoka’s.

At least he has the decency to not play dumb.

The diner is packed this morning—like every morning, probably. The line of workers waiting to order breakfast stretches all the way out the door, and Varlaynee even has a couple of helpers to ease the load of rush hour. The place is loud and stuffy, but now Ahsoka understands why Maul picked a spot right by the entrance, where the incoming patrons practically brush against the already seated customers’ shoulders. 

Because now, a man unfortunate enough to be passing by their table falls victim to a Sith’s endeavors in pickpocketing. 

He’s engaged in lively conversation with his buddies as he stands with his back to the table, with proximity that, had there been no excuse of overcrowding, would be considered impolite. Ultimately, said proximity brings an unimpeded view of his back pockets—one of which a wallet is still poking out of at an unnatural angle.

His hands hidden in his lap under the table, Maul continues to stare Ahsoka down with snide expectancy.

Ahsoka huffs in disbelief that he has the gall to be taunting her like this. “Put that back,” she mouthes energetically.

Maul scoffs and lifts his brows, as if he can’t believe the gall _she_ has to be making demands of him. “No.”

Ahsoka nervously looks around to make sure no one’s looking in their direction or spotting anything out of the ordinary, but something tells her Maul wouldn’t attempt this in the first place if he wasn’t sure of his success. As such, there’s no knowing why she’s trying to talk sense into him when it’s clearly futile.

Perhaps she simply needs to voice her complaints in order to reassure herself in her own values.

“These people don’t have much as it is,” she leans forward so that her low words can be heard across the table over the noise. “If you’re going to steal, at the very least steal from someone who can afford it.”

“Ah. I see.” The wallet slides back into the pocket, but the glint in Maul’s eyes paints the gesture entirely sarcastic. “Please,” he looks around the room with a faux-curious expression, “show me this man of means.”

“Well—not here!”

“Then where, hm? Tell me.”

Ahsoka has no response for him. The situation is vaguely familiar and brings back the lasting aftertaste of discomfort.

“Tano, if something is not to your liking, you are more than welcome to stay on this dirtball. Sit here with your ideals like a broody hen. Put yourself to work if you don’t want to starve on the streets. Walk away, no one’s keeping you.”

“And maybe I will!”

“By all means! Farewell.” Maul takes a sip from his cup, and, after a long moment of mutual staring, nods towards the door. “Well, go on, then. Goodbye.”

Ahsoka grinds her teeth, chews on her cheek. _The second we get off this rock,_ she acidly thinks. _Just you wait._

Eyes cast down, lips pursed, she goes back to poking at her food. She doesn’t need to look to feel the smug arch of Maul’s brow, and in her periphery she sees the poor wallet floating smoothly through the air and disappearing under their table. 

“Doesn’t it disgust you?” Ahsoka asks, defeated. “Even a little?”

Maul takes a moment to respond, and she doesn’t know if he’s thinking about his answer or only pretending to. “If it means that I can get food in my stomach and clothes to wear without having to look over my shoulder, then, no, I’m afraid it doesn’t.”

She shakes her head and returns to her breakfast. Maul waits for the line of patrons to move up a bit, and then takes a subtle peek inside the wallet before tucking it into his belt.

“So, how’s it looking?” Ahsoka idly twirls her fork in front of her face, eyes fixed on the piece of food stuck on its prongs. “You rich now?”

“It’s something.”

“Enough for a new change of clothes? Or for a ride out of here? Or maybe for a ticket back into the underworld? What’s your plan, anyway?”

“Don’t gripe, Tano, it doesn’t become you.”

“Oh, I’ll show you what doesn’t become me—”

“Haven’t seen you folks around here before.”

The two snap their heads to the side in tandem, where a Snivvian that’s just come in is addressing them from the doorway. “You two didn’t come on the last transfer, did you?”

Hesitation brings about an awkward silence. 

“No, no, you didn’t,” the Snivvian comes closer, seemingly unbothered by the pair’s perplexity. “I definitely would’ve seen you. With tattooes like that— No offense meant, mister, rather on the contrary—they’re very striking. Just saying you wouldn’t easily forget the look of ‘em, you know?”

 _Good point,_ Ahsoka thinks with a vague sense of unease. _Can’t imagine there’s many Dathomirian Nightbrothers traipsing around the Galaxy, and red-and-black ones at that._

“Don’t see many young women such as yourself in these parts, either,” the man says, making Ahsoka give a start and perk up at being addressed. However, she’s glad to find she isn’t expected to respond. “Usually new people come in groups by specialized transit, but, lately, some’ve been cropping up on their own. You folks come looking for work?”

“...Yes.” Maul shifts in his seat and straightens up in a way that manages to look relaxed and attentive at once. “Heard about the operation here, thought we’d try our luck.”

“Well, you came at the right time. It’s an emerging business down here, they’re still populating the planet. There’s several work points, this right here’s one of the newer ones. When’d you arrive?”

The line moves up, but the man lets the people behind him through and stays in place.

“Just the other day,” Maul says. Yesterday, in other words. 

“That recent? And I see you already managed to get a taste of the marshes, eh? Bad landing or something?”

Ahsoka wonders just how many details of their arrival they’ll end up having to disclose while Maul makes a surprisingly good imitation of a resigned, somber expression. 

“Yeah,” he says, and even his lowered voice sounds genuinely rueful. “Something like that.”

“Oh...” The Snivvian’s face falls. “You crashed, didn’t you? Man, I’m real sorry.”

Maul gives a couple of grave nods in appreciation of the sympathy, and Ahsoka decides to jump in. If they’re going to half-lie their way through this, she figures, they might as well try to make it as convincing as they can.

“It is what it is, unfortunately,” she says with a small, regretful smile, and it surprises her how easily the story comes to her. “But it’s not all bad, really. No one got hurt. We’re here now, and... well, the ship was an old piece of junk anyway.”

“True that,” Maul huffs, and shoots her a glance of reserved amusement. “You _were_ meaning to get rid of it for a while now.”

Ahsoka breathes out a short laugh. “Consider that finally done, then.”

“Well, I’m plenty glad you two are alright. And I’m certainly liking the optimism,” the Snivvian chuckles, and then extends a hand towards Maul. “I’m Deeso. Deeso Ninda.”

“Ontazz.” Maul shakes Deeso’s hand, and the latter turns to Ahsoka.

“And you, miss?”

Ahsoka smiles as she quickly thinks up an alias. Her name’s not at all well-known, she’s sure, but it can’t hurt. “Ashla,” she says, and gives a handshake of her own.

Deeso smiles widely in return. “Nice meeting you both. But farming’s grueling work, miss Ashla, you sure you’re up for it?”

The smile grows tight-lipped. “Quite.”

That earns her another chuckle. “So sure of yourself, are you? Well, in any case, chak-root isn’t the worst of it. Procedure takes some getting used to, but...”

Maul rubs his chin. “Chak-root?”

“Well, there’s also rice and arrowroot. Some fish and shrimp farms down south. But chak-root’s the main trade on this rock, yeah; it’s native, grows everywhere like weeds even without our help, so to speak. With the influx of workers lately, they’ve been sending couriers to take the crop off our hands twice as often. And on top of it all, it’s harvest season! Work around here is plentiful. So, again, I tell you, you’ve come at just the right time.”

“Couriers?” Maul presses on in a perfectly innocent and conversational tone, not even bothering to dig deeper than that, seeing as Deeso seems more than happy to talk his heart out. 

“Oh, yeah, those come every week nowadays. New schedules and all. Tomorrow foreman’s making the rounds of the storehouses and we take the crop to the landing pad— Hey, you’ll get to see how it’s all done! Courier’s coming the day after tomorrow.”

“And where do they take the chak-root?” Ahsoka asks, also taking care to keep her tone casual in the face of the peaking interest.

“Oh, who knows, somewhere off-planet. Sure they’ve got production lines set up somewhere—I’m not the person to ask, I’m just here to do good work. Community’s nice, pay’s alright. Not much else to need, is there?”

“It sure sounds nice,” Ahsoka smiles again, and the gesture comes easy, albeit for a reason different from what Deeso might expect.

“And doesn’t just sound, it _is_ nice. Trust me on that, you’ll see. It’s hard work, but it’s honest work, and the foreman’s the best guy you’ll meet. Speaking of, did you see him already? You’ll need to get signed in first thing.”

“We were just about to head there, actually,” Maul says. “Now that you mention it.”

“Oh, great, he’ll be glad to have you. His office is past the market, closer to the storehouses, in case you don’t know. Big green building, can’t miss it.” 

“Well, thank you, Deeso.” 

“Qui Rendo’s the name. Great guy.” 

“That’s very helpful.”

“Oh, for sure. Always happy to help.”

“I’m sure. But you’ve been more than generous, and we wouldn’t want to keep you for too long.” Maul stretches his lips into a relatively friendly-looking smile. “Breakfast’s not going to eat itself, now, is it?”

“You’re certainly right about that, my friend. You’re so right. I’m gonna hop back in line right here, eh?” Deeso does just that and moves up a little with the other patrons. “Again, it was nice meeting you both. Tell Rendo I said hi, and I’ll see you around!”

“Sure thing, Deeso Ninda,” Maul drawls. “Sure thing.”

The other smiles and nods, and as the line moves further up, Ahsoka gives him a friendly wave and a nod of her own.

They sit in silence for a few moments, mulling over the information.

“Well, Lady Ashla.” Maul sits back, eyes still fixed on Deeso’s retreating back, and takes a slow, methodical sip of his drink. “It looks like we’ve got ourselves a ride.”

Ahsoka’s huff is part amusement, part relief as she hides her emerging giddy smile behind the rim of her cup.

*

The credits Maul stole are, in fact, enough for a pair of hooded canvas ponchos from the farming gear shop. Ahsoka quickly caves and goes along with the purchase; withstanding dirty looks and constantly worrying whether the Iron Heart is still hidden turned out to be exhausting. Either way, she wouldn’t be proving anything by refusing to make an effort to blend in, even by means of stolen money.

There are much worse things one can condone.

Now, at first light, they hide on the landing pad behind containers of harvested chak-root and wait for the scheduled arrival of the freight team.

“Let’s try to simply talk to them first,” Ahsoka says. It’s way too early for her mind to be functioning properly, but at least she’s glad to be occupied with something rather than having to spend another moment trying to huddle up to a wall of some building in a pitiful attempt at sleep. “Like normal. People can be more reasonable than you’d think.”

Only slightly, Maul turns his head in her direction, making the rest of the way with just his eyes. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

 _Force._ “Just— Humor me, will you?”

A soft huff. “As you wish.”

Sitting like this, leaning against a crate and feeling the chilly breeze on her face as the sky lightens up by the minute, it’s tempting to doze off.

Perhaps she does—a while later, loud noise yanks her back into awareness; soon harsh rushes of wind lap at her face and bend the nearby grass as a massive barge makes its descent.

Ahsoka yawns and blinks her eyes open to regard the landing vessel. On the grey body of the ship beams a red, twelve pointed star of the Corporate Sector Authority.

“Huh, wait—” Ahsoka blinks again and squints, then glances at Maul. “The CSA?”

The expression of misgiving on Maul’s face as he watches the ship disquiets her.

“The CSA,” he warily echoes.

“Damn.” Ahsoka frowns back at the ship. The foreman and two other men come onto the landing pad and halt in the center, ready to receive the courier. “I… forgot we’re in CorpSec. Should’ve known who’s picking up the export, it’s obvious.”

“No, it wasn’t obvious, Tano, don’t be foolish. Do you know how many trade routes run in this sector?”

“Well— lots, but ultimately they all answer to CSA.”

“Yes, but they’re still independent. They aren’t risky and don’t get as much scrutiny.”

“Scrutiny from whom?”

Maul looks at her as if the answer is incredibly obvious. “The new order. The former Republic. The former Supreme Chancellor.”

“No, they— CSA’s supported by the Separatists. And in any case, the Republic’s jurisdiction isn’t as widespread as many think.” 

“Separatists.” Maul scoffs. “Republic. Call it what you want, it’s one and the same.”

“Used to be!” Ahsoka objects. “They used to be Republic, yes, but they seceded.”

“Do you still not understand?” Maul turns to her again. “Do you still not see? Dooku is just another pawn. Just another pet who carries out Sidious's every whim and wish. The Republic did not split due to some petty differences in ideologies, it split because one person, and one person only, pulled the right strings and made it so. The unrest and corruption inherent to your Republic was only stirred and amplified, routed in a specific direction, fostered and nurtured over years and decades. The war you’ve been fighting was a ploy, a carefully orchestrated part of a greater plan unseen to you. The war you spent your entire life preparing for and then fighting meant nothing.”

It’s only after a long, straining moment that Ahsoka realizes that she’s lightly shaking her head.

She says nothing. There is nothing to say to that. Instead, she swallows, turns back to the ship, and focuses on what she knows and what is real.

The foreman’s been speaking with the overseer of the freight team, and as the latter punches something into his datapad, the CSA workers—among whom are a few people and mostly droids—begin loading containers onto the ship. The foreman shakes hands with the overseer, and, with his two escorts, leaves.

“So, let me guess,” Ahsoka mutters as they watch the work progressing. “They’re headed to Etti IV.”

“Might be making stops to pick up more cargo elsewhere, or drop it all off at factory points,” Maul infers. “But, ultimately, yes, I would assume so.”

CorpSec’s capital, CSA’s base of operations. Ahsoka has never been there before, but now a metropolis such as Etti IV sounds like the perfect place to hole up and plan out her next steps.

The organics on the freight team are mostly there to oversee the work of droids, it seems, and at least two people stand nearby, hidden from view behind the containers.

“Wasn’t supposed to come to this rock at all,” a female voice grumbles. “I hate swamps.”

“It’s not a swamp, it’s a marsh,” a bored, methodical male voice replies.

“Oh, who gives a kark. Point is, this isn’t my usual post. Teams getting split, stretched thin throughout the sector. There’s barely enough people to cover all the planets they’re taking on, it’s all moving too fast. Soon we’ll be running out of droids.”

“Look, if they’re bringing on more workers, they’ll be taking on more loaders accordingly. Shifts in protocol are always a chain reaction.”

“No, you mark my words. Soon we’ll be dragging crates all over the place by ourselves.”

A sigh. “Sure thing, Yivi.”

“And the workers are another thing. Where will they keep getting them? There’s only so many jobs they can give out.”

“Ah, well. You know.” A long pause. “They have their means.”

When everyone looks busy enough not to pay much attention to anything else, the overseer settles to wait on the edge of the platform, and Maul and Ahsoka decide to move in.

“Just talk,” Ahsoka says under her breath as they walk up, to which Maul lets out an amused sigh.

“Yes, yes, alright.”

The overseer is a large, stocky, reptilian-like man. Very large, in fact, as Ahsoka sees when they approach and he’s towering over them both. He turns his turtle-like head and frowns his massive brows.

“Can I help you?”

His voice is just as booming as one would expect.

“Yes, actually,” Maul clasps his hands behind his back, “we believe you can.”

“I’m listening.”

“We would like to secure passage via your ship.”

Perhaps it would have been better, Ahsoka thinks, if she was the one to do the talking from the get-go. In her experience, requests made in mildly haughty tones have a tendency to turn people off.

“Huh?” The overseer shows genuine befuddlement. “Uh… This is a freighter.”

Maul inclines his head. “We can see that.”

“Uh, no, no, this is no civvie transport. Don’t know when the next one of those’s coming, I don’t keep track of your schedules. But this here’s off-limits. You come here for work—you sit here and work, you don’t get all up in employers’ business.”

“Please,” Ahsoka steps in and Maul folds his arms over his chest. “Can’t you make an exception this once? It’s very urgent.”

“Oh, everything’s always urgent for everybody, and then I get chewed out by my boss. Spare me your sob story, rules are rules.”

Ahsoka doesn’t give Maul the satisfaction of bristling at his side-eye of _I-told-you-so._ She just rolls her eyes and gives a shrug in place of a go-ahead.

Maul idly flicks his eyes from side to side, making sure the sector is clear, and, arms still crossed, lifts one hand from his bicep to waft it gently in the air.

“You want to let us onto your ship.”

“What? No, I just told you—”

_Wh—_

Ahsoka feels her throat clenching, and in her periphery she sees the minuscule but abrupt widening of Maul’s eyes.

_Frak._

This time, the motion of Maul’s hand is a little wider and more deliberate.

“Let us abord your ship,” he hisses slowly, warily, and when the overseer’s confusion morphs into a skeptical scowl, Ahsoka’s gut flips.

“What’s with the waving, pal? Like one of them Jedi or something. You trying to play tricks?”

It’s a good thing the poncho is big and concealing, or else the involuntary stiffening of her shoulders and the painful digging of her nails into her palms might not have been well-received.

_Say something. Say something, idiot._

“Forgive me,” Maul beats her to the punch and Ahsoka isn’t sure whether to feel relief or preliminary concern, “I meant no offense. But—” He frowns, tilts his head and narrows his eyes, then lowers his voice considerably. “I just heard you mention— You know of the Jedi.”

Ahsoka does her best to keep her composure and not reveal any tension or worry on her face, though, she’s sure, that’s not turning out very well. Maul’s rhetoric, of course, isn’t helping.

 _You’re supposed to be evading the subject,_ alarms blare in her head, _not—_

“Pft, everyone knows the Jedi. You one of them?”

_—diving headfirst into it._

“I would be... amazed to find Jedi in these parts. So far out into the Outer Rim... Just what would the odds need to be? It would be a downright miracle.”

The overseer crosses his arms. “It’s not unheard of.”

“Really?” Once again, Maul pitches his voice low. “You’ve seen a Jedi? Actually?”

“Me, personally? No, but I heard plenty.”

“So I see.” Maul holds a staid pause as he takes a moment to look the man up and down, as if screening him for something. “And, since you know of the Jedi, you must also know of their legendary weapons.”

Ahsoka bites down on the insides of her cheeks to keep herself from bursting out exclaims of protest.

Surely, this isn’t going where she thinks it is.

The overseer’s brow crawls up and his posture loosens slightly, betraying his confused, but nonetheless peaking interest. “And what of them?”

“Pretty things, those laser swords, aren’t they?” Maul clasps his hands behind his back once again, slows down his words to a manner that’s bordering on hypnotic. “Special. Expensive.” He takes half a step forward, drops his eyes to the datapad in the overseer’s hand, and takes a moment to make something out on the screen. “...Selruk, is it?”

“That’s the name.”

“Do you like your job, Selruk?”

Selruk shifts his jaw and narrows his eyes—in inquiry, rather than skepticism.

“How’s the pay? The hours? Everything is satisfactory?”

“It’s... alright,” Selruk answers slowly. “Why?”

“I hear there’s been changes in ordinances, recently. Likewise, adjustments in protocol, I assume?” Maul tilts his head to the side, holds out a pause. “And with new protocol, naturally, in comes new routine. Abrupt changes in scheduling with hardly a warning? Calls into work on your off-days? Unprompted reassignments into sectors with working procedures you might not be entirely familiar with?”

Selruk says nothing and his posture looses slightly, although his eyes are fixed steady on Maul’s. As if locked in place.

“Might you be harboring feelings of… being used, perhaps? Sensing a lack of sympathy from the higher-ups amidst these changes, maybe, when it seems like your position is getting more compromised by the day? What could be worse than a loss of stability due to neglect?”

“Yeah, it...” Selruk ends up nodding lightly along to the words. “Could be better. But everyone’s having it a bit rough now, with these transitions and all. It’ll blow over.”

“Will it?” Maul takes another small, slow step forward. “Does it really feel like it to you, Selruk? Or does it feel like something bigger might be brewing? Something you have no real control over?”

“It’s…” Selruk fidgets, then glances around the landing pad. Then, he lowers his voice considerably. “It’s been rough, I admit. But what are you getting at?”

Only slightly, nearly unnoticeably, Maul narrows his eyes, and Ahsoka senses another churn in her stomach.

“Tell me again what you know of the Jedi’s weapons.”

“I, uh— I don’t know, man, they’re rare—”

 _“Rare._ Precisely. Extremely, incredibly rare. Because they’re powered by one of the rarest minerals in the Galaxy, did you know that?”

Selruk fidgets again, looking uncertain, but not necessarily nervous. 

“Heard something, sure.”

“Good,” Maul says, and, unconsciously, Ahsoka clenches her fists even tighter.

The overseer clearly wants to say something, but, for some reason, stops himself. 

“You’re a smart man, Selruk.” Maul raises his chin, straightens out his shoulders in a relaxed, inviting gesture. “I want to make you an offer. One that, I hope, will make you reconsider the answer to our request.”

“An offer.” Arms crossed, Selruk taps his fingers on his bicep, and then looks around once more before leaning slightly in. “Which is?”

“I propose to trade a Jedi kyber crystal for a place aboard your ship and a promise of silence about having met us.”

Ahsoka simply blinks, draws a deep but discreet breath, and then makes her best attempt at numbing the multitude of conflicting feelings and thoughts while tensely flicking her eyes between Selruk and Maul.

“A— what— you have a crystal?” Selruk once again looks around the landing pad, and then pulls his arms tighter around himself. His voice comes down to a quiet hush. “Where’d you get it?”

Maul casually shrugs. “Found it. Stole it. Bought it. Does it matter?”

“How do you buy such a thing?”

This time, Maul takes his turn to slowly look over his shoulder. When he turns back, he holds another pause.

“On the black market, of course.”

“Tsk. Frak’s illegal.” Selruk scoffs to himself. “Of course it is.”

“No, no, not illegal. But it’s incredibly rare. There’s no ‘ordinary’ way of buying a kyber crystal simply because it doesn’t have a price on the open market.”

“And how much is it on the black market?”

“Well,” Maul rubs his chin, “that depends on the price fluctuation. But, on average, you can confidently expect it to fall in the range between four and six hundred thousand.”

Ahsoka thinks back to Hondo’s attack on the younglings’ ship on its way from Ilum—not nearly the first in history. The trouble she had to go through, the price she had to pay to save a few kyber crystals that time. If the things nearly cost her and the younglings—

_The younglings._

They have to be safe. They are. She did not get them back to the Temple in one piece that day just for them to get shot up by clones not even a year later. They’re just kids. They are well and they are safe.

...If the crystals nearly cost her and the younglings their lives, as well as considering their rarity beyond the Order and the pirates’ unhealthy interest in them, then the price Maul stated sounds plausible.

Selruk’s eyes widen, and it’s enough for Ahsoka to know he’s been caught on the hook. 

“And times like these,” Maul goes on, “these crystals are even rarer. So just think how the price might go up.”

“If that’s true,” Selruk whispers, “that’s insane.”

“Indeed. And you could own one. Keep it. Sell it. Do with it what you want.”

 _Bizarre,_ Ahsoka can’t help but think as her heart slowly sinks further into her stomach, _to bribe an ordinary civilian with such a thing._

But, really, what other choice do they have?

What _do they have?_

“How come you haven’t sold it yourself, if it yields so much?” Selruk grunts.

“Money is no object to me,” Maul replies, “I do not care for it. I’m much more interested in all things unique and peculiar—and a kyber, you have to agree, is a prized possession for any collector. But, I’m willing to give it away—in exchange for this passage and your silence.”

“What’s so important about this passage, then?”

“I’m afraid that falls under the second half of my request.”

Silence blooms as the two stare each other off.

“I don’t know,” at last, Selruk rumbles. “Seems kinda fishy. If the higher-ups find out—”

“They will not,” Maul assures. “I can promise you one thing—you won’t need to worry about anything. You won’t even need to _do_ anything; simply let us sneak aboard, direct us to a corner to hide in, don’t say a word to anyone and simply go on with your life. As soon as you land at your final destination, we will be gone, and you will forget we were there and will never even remember.”

Another long stretch of silence. Selruk watches the workers in the distance, flicks his eyes down to his datapad, brushes his gaze over Ahsoka on the way back to Maul’s face.

“Well,” he says, and then clears his throat. “Let’s see that crystal, then.”

“I obviously don’t have it on my person,” Maul spreads his hands, “that would be foolish of me. This commodity is practically priceless. _Priceless._ Do you understand what that means, Selruk? What that can mean for you? You will be rich. You will be free of your piteous job. You will be able to—” Another, short, but thoughtful pause. When he speaks again, Maul’s voice is softer. “Do you have a family, Selruk?”

Selruk shifts uneasily on his feet. Swallows. “Yeah. A wife and two little daughters.”

“Two beautiful little daughters.” Maul’s lips stretch into a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “And at least four hundred thousand credits. Think about it. Think of what you could do for your daughters with this money, Selruk. What kind of life your family could have, having escaped all these shifting and changing orders you’re struggling through now.

“And I could give it all to you. Today. You can be rich—truly rich—not in years, not in months, not in days. _Today.”_

It takes that final push and another, long silence filled with warring and stifling thoughts for Selruk to cave.

“Fine.” He takes a deep breath. “I’ll bring you two along. As long as I get the crystal first.”

“Of course,” Maul gives a solemn nod. “Just let me fetch it, and you will have it.”

“Make it quick. The ship’s leaving in three hours and won’t be waiting.”

“Worry not. That is more than enough time.”

*

As soon as they’re far enough away and, supposedly, on the way to the rock near which they buried their lightsabers, Ahsoka lets down her compliant veneer.

_“Maul!”_

Maul whips around to face her and pins her in place with his yellow stare.

“Do you want to get off this planet?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then let me spell this out for you. In our possession right now there are four kyber crystals. Three lightsaber frames, that could be sold whole or as scrapped down for parts. The former would yield more, while the latter is less risky. We will need to quickly acquire a ship, preferably by means as legal as possible in order to keep eyes off our backs, for which we would need a permit. Along with the ship, we’ll need fuel. And on top of all that, I think you’ll agree that some actual clothing and food would come in handy as well.”

Ahsoka is left only opening and closing her mouth like a fish, wishing to speak but finding nothing to say.

“Any questions?”

“I—” She forces out a sigh and looks at the ground, trying to locate the words in the grass. “This is— I just—”

“You don’t want to give up your Jedi toys, I understand. But there’s one important thing you may be forgetting: you will not need them again.”

It’s a verbal slap in the face. Never mind the fact that she won’t be using them any time soon, but to think she could give up the only things from Anakin she has left...

Though, at this point, there’s no question that trying to build a new life from scratch is an unthinkable task. If she couldn’t even manage it properly back on Coruscant, why should she expect to be able to do so now, on the outskirts of the Galaxy?

“No, it’s—” And yet, words still tear out of her throat of their own accord. “…I had other plans.” 

Which is only partly a lie. Ahsoka doesn’t know if she can even call it a plan.

She isn’t sure what kind of reaction she expected, but Maul only tilts his head and slightly raises his brows in what might be mistaken for curiosity by another.

“Such as?” he calmly asks.

“First of all, we never agreed to share anything,” Ahsoka says, her voice hard. “And either way, I was going to leave.”

A pause settles, in which Ahsoka’s assurance wavers.

“Were you?”

She swallows.

“And where, if I may ask, were you planning to go?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs after a long moment, and realizes how pathetic and childish her uncertainty must look. “Somewhere safe.”

Get ahold of her people. Find them. Figure out what’s going on.

“And where is ‘safe’?”

Paralyzed by the silence, Ahsoka can only draw a long breath.

“I’ll tell you why you don’t know,” Maul says lowly. “Because, right now, there is no such place, and no matter how hard you try to shut out the truth, deep down inside, you feel it. It’s just a matter of time before you consciously grasp this concept, and until then… I would advise you to at least try not to get yourself killed.”

“I wouldn’t get myself killed,” Ahsoka retorts, but the words come out quiet and frail.

“With those preconceptions of yours, trust me, you would.”

“Trust you,” she echoes in a soft, mirthless scoff. “As if I ever could.”

“Well, that’s your choice.” Maul turns away and resumes movement. “But I don’t see what other option you currently have.”

*

“So what happened back there?” Ahsoka asks as they come up on the hill with the rock. They’ve been walking in tense silence, and a new subject is as welcome as a breath of fresh air. “Why was Selruk immune?”

“Because he’s a Yinchorri, and I failed to identify him as such right away upon meeting.” Maul’s brow is tensed with a pinch of contrition and he looks steadily forward. “I admit I wasn’t expecting resistance; I haven’t seen one in more than a decade. They’re biologically immune to mind control.”

Ahsoka replies with a curt hum of acknowledgment. At least Maul managed to alleviate the suspicion—somewhat.

As they approach the rock, she balls her hands into fists.

“Don’t even think about taking one of mine,” she warns.

“Wasn’t going to.” 

With her sabers out of the earth and scrubbed clean of soil, Ahsoka hides them in the deep pockets of her poncho and sits back on her heels. Maul sits opposite of her, hands braced on his knees and chin lowered as he watches his saber through closed eyelids, with the entirety of his being. It levitates before him, rolls gently through the air into a horizontal position, perfectly parallel with the ground. A moment. Another. Then, concentration’s exertion knits Maul’s brow in a sudden hitch of disturbance, and instead of falling back to the ground like Ahsoka expected—like she’s seen happen time and time again—the lightsaber gives a soft click, and the different parts begin to smoothly slide out of position.

The two crystals emit unsettling, fascinating crimson. It’s disturbing, her education tells her; it’s barbaric, this… enslavement of a natural branch of the Force. And yet, like any uncrippled kyber, these ones reach out and call to her. Unwilling to step away from the one they serve, it’s merely a greeting, an acknowledgement of another being so near in the Force, and their voice is so unique, so unknowable yet so _alive_ that, for a moment, Ahsoka can’t bring herself to feel anything besides genuine wonderment.

Unhurried, Maul opens his eyes and gently takes one of his crystals between his thumb and forefinger. With a gentle, elaborate motion of his other hand, the lightsaber parts slide back into place, the mechanisms click shut, and the weapon lowers itself back onto the ground.

The crystal glows in slow, faint pulses. Like a heart, Ahsoka muses—and then blinks in sudden realization.

Red crystals are telltale signs of the Sith, she thinks, of which, compared to characteristic blues and greens of the Jedi, there are incredibly few in the Galaxy. So, in truth, it would be much less risky to give up one of Ahsoka’s crystals now, and in result have more control over whose hands the red ones ultimately fall into.

 _But no,_ she brings herself back to her senses. She owes Maul nothing. She holds no obligation to help him hide or cover his tracks and she will do no such thing.

Either way, Maul doesn’t seem at all concerned by the situation, so Ahsoka quickly lets the thoughts go.

Maul clips the lightsaber to his belt and makes sure it’s fully concealed by the poncho, then hides the crystal in a pocket and rises to his feet.

“Ready to go, I assume?” he casts his gaze down at Ahsoka and she wastes no time in standing up, as well. She hums in assent, and they set off on their way back to the landing pad.

All the while, Ahsoka mourns the loss of a good chunk of theoretical money.

“Are kyber crystals really that priceless?” she asks at some point.

Maul huffs through his nose.

“Of course not,” he says. “It’s a myth. Without a Force wielder to command it, a kyber on the market is not much more than a common gem.”

Ahsoka finds that, while disappointed, she somehow isn’t very surprised.

*

Selruk greets them with less tension than how they saw him last.

“You came back,” he says, and notes of wonder play in his voice. “So, this is really happening.”

“Of course,” Maul says, and, having made sure no one out of the still-working loaders is watching, takes the crystal out and presents it to the man. 

“You remember our agreement?”

“Yes, yes. Smuggle the two of you onboard, keep my mouth shut,” Selruk reiterates and only then does Maul place the crystal into his hand. 

To Ahsoka’s relief, the man makes no comment and exhibits no abnormal reaction to the crystal’s color. He simply takes a moment to look it over with wonder and fascination.

“So how do I know it’s the real thing?” he mutters so absently Ahsoka believes he’s not at all concerned.

“You can only ever be as sure as I am, my friend,” Maul says. “I suspect only a Jedi could tell for sure.”

“Well...” Selruk holds the crystal up to the light and squints at it with one eye. “I can see it’s no colored glass, obviously. And it’s not like there’s many Jedi wandering around the black markets, eh?”

“My thoughts exactly. Nobody is an expert.”

“Nah, with a glow like that, I’m thinking it’s the real deal.”

“Perhaps. Or it’ll fool just about anyone.”

“That‘s fine by me. What a funny little thing.” Selruk gives a lopsided grin, flicks the crystal up in the air, catches it, and then tucks it away into a small chest pocket of his uniform.

“Well, then. I’ll distract my men and let you folks through. You’ll hide in the cargo hold.”

A trace of a smirk quirks at the edge of Maul’s lips. “A pleasure doing business with you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine.” Selruk extends his hand, and Maul shakes it. “And welcome aboard, my friend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wasn’t sure if I wanted to use Ashla as Ahsoka’s alias at first, seeing as it’s too similar and you’d think you’d pick a name that’s as far from your real one as possible, but then I remembered that this bitch told Trace she went to Skywalker Academy and thought. yeah. yeah no that works


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god these chapters are getting longer and longer, I'm gonna have to bring it under control

By the time the freighter touches down in the capital of Etti IV, its cargo compartment is half-empty due to all the stops made along the way. The leftover unloading commences, and with a couple of inconspicuous distractions, Ahsoka sneaks outside unseen along with Maul and slips under the ship’s loading ramp for a calm moment of assessing the circumstances.

The color of the sky denotes late evening, and the spaceport is brightly lit. Ahsoka drags her eyes over the parts of the port she can see from underneath the loading ramp. Completely separate from the general Mondder spaceport, it seems, this one houses multitudes of giant service freighters, be it ones of the CSA akin to the one they arrived in, or belonging to other companies. The place is buzzing with activity: droids and people alike zipping around, loading and unloading shipments, transporting cargo on trucks.

It’s a simple matter of getting around the gathering of workers in front of their ship, Ahsoka thinks as she plans out a path to the exit. The rest of the way is straightforward—no one knows she’s here, and, more importantly, no one knows she isn’t supposed to be.

When her eyes skate off Selruk’s back and into the direction he’s facing, however, her breath sticks in her throat.

The approaching inspection team looks nothing like regular inspectors.

Ahsoka swallows, and then has to focus hard to take a deep, steady breath.

Inhale.

What are they doing here?

Exhale.

Why _here?_

“Troopers,” she breathes, her voice barely audible, “what are they—”

A gasp frozen on her lips, she makes another, more careful sweep of her eyes around the port and spots more of the same groups, more of those painfully familiar white sets of armor in the distance, and she feels the dull thudding of her pulse in her throat.

She flinches when a hand comes down on her shoulder.

The touch turns into a grip in an instant, just short of nails digging into the skin through the fabric, but it’s painful enough as it is.

“Tano.” Maul roughly turns her to face him, holding her in place with the same iron grip. “You have yet to understand, so listen carefully.”

The retorting whisper comes out jerky and ragged. Breathless. “I understand everything just fine.”

“No, I’m afraid you don’t.” Ahsoka tries wriggling out of Maul’s hold, but he jerks her back into place. “Tano, listen to me. Think back to Mandalore. Think back to everything that happened. Think back to how they pursued you.”

Ahsoka snarls, once again thrashes in his grip.

How dare he.

How dare he bring that up.

“These are no longer the men you know,” Maul hisses, and in the shadow of the ramp above their heads, at this proximity, his eyes burn. “But they know you. They know your face. It takes one click of a comlink to relay your position and send hounds after you. Just one.

“Do not interact with them. Do not engage them. Do not let them see you. Under no circumstances should you openly use the Force, unless there are no witnesses and you are intending to kill. Under no circumstances should you risk disclosing your identity.”

Blankly, Ahsoka stares into Maul’s eyes.

Is this what her life has become? Stalking through the shadows like a criminal?

Is this what her entire world has been building up to?

Maul shakes her by the shoulder again. “Do you understand?”

“Oh, for the love of—”

“Tell me you understand. Say it.”

“Yes, yes, I frakking get it—”

“Do _not_ take this lightly, Ahsoka Tano.”

A long, tense moment of stillness breaks with the burst of air whizzing through Ahsoka’s lips.

“I can handle myself,” she hisses with as much insulted venom as she can muster.

A trick of the light jumps in Maul’s eyes as a sharp, glowing flicker.

“I know you can,” he calmly says. “That’s what worries me.”

To match the force of his grip, he practically shoves her towards the edge of the ramp.

“I expect these clones are involved with the CSA,” he says in the end. “There should be fewer of them in the city.”

Good thing that’s where she was already headed, then. How convenient.

Ahsoka doesn’t think, doesn’t look at him—just makes sure there’s a safe path of cover for her to get around the nearby group of clones before, at last, taking off.

When she gets out of the spaceport, when the need of putting on an act of normalcy lessens, she starts running.

*

Mondder. A thriving city of many heights and great depths, built through and around the craters of Etti IV—natural wonders made secure and carefully sectioned off to keep everyone out of harm's way. The safety railings don’t keep the occasional suicidal junkie from falling to his death, however, but it’s not like there’s anything that can stop a man intent on meeting his maker. It’s unfortunate, truly.

The Yinchorri has seen too much.

He conducts his business, first with the clones, then with a couple of other CSA officials. He leaves the spaceport and takes a right—the direction opposite from the upper levels’ central streets. Not one for a rewarding drink after work at the end of the week, then.

Maul follows forty paces behind.

The Yinchorri walks for a good quarter of an hour, leading him through several blocks. He never once looks over his shoulder; Maul wouldn’t need to make much of an effort to stay unseen either way. There are more people out on the streets in this part of the city than when he’s been here last.

Eventually, though, they make it out of the crowds, and the scenery changes from the commercial districts to the much less dense residential areas. Tall apartment buildings line up along the road, shielding the alleyways that lead into sectors of small, private landing pads.

Most of which, if Maul’s memory serves him right, aren’t properly maintained and are therefore as good as abandoned.

The hour is late. The occasional lamppost does little in properly illuminating the street, and thick patches of dark lead the way from one meager spot of light to the next. 

Before long, the Yinchorri stops at a corner, under one of the blinking lampposts. He pulls out a cigarra, clamps it in his mouth as he fishes around in his pockets.

The second he pulls out a lighter, the thing slips out of his large, clumsy hand and flits into the alley on his right.

Must be the wind.

Maul neither slows nor quickens his pace, merely takes more care to step a little softer as he turns the corner into the empty, unlit alley and watches as the man ahead catches up to his escaped lighter and bends down to pick it up.

Right before he can touch it, a flick of Maul’s fingers propels the lighter a few paces forward, like a kicked pebble.

“The hell...”

One more flick. Another. When the Yinchorri finally thinks to look around in anxious confusion, Maul steps to the side, behind a nearby dumpster. The next time he risks discovery, the increasingly deep shadows help blend him into the dark.

He herds the man all the way through the alley and onto the deserted landing pad. Once there, he finally lets him pick up his poor lighter, draw out a heavy exhale along with mutterings of confused relief, and even light his cigarra for a well-deserved break before turning back.

He’s allowed a couple of drags before he drops the cigarra to the ground and starts coughing and clawing at his throat, hoarsely gasping for breath that quickly escapes him.

The neck is short and incredibly thick, sturdy, lined with tough muscles of his species’ biology. One would have virtually no chance of choking out such a creature by hand. With other means, of course, the task becomes manageable. 

Still much too slow, however. Maul doesn’t have the time. So he tenses his fingers, clenches them slowly into a fist, and _twists._

The Yinchorri’s neck snaps with a loud pop.

When he falls to the ground, Maul walks up, grinds out the cigarra with the tip of his foot, and then pushes the body with the Force to the edge of the landing pad.

His crystal waits for him in the chest pocket. A quick pat-down of the Yinchorri provides with a wallet of a couple hundred credits, as well as an ID chip that Maul leaves to rest in its rightful place.

When he’s done, he straightens back up and, with a forceful shove of his leg, pushes the body over the edge for a quick trip to the lower levels of the city.

*

Ahsoka runs. Streams of people and transport lead her into areas of dense activity; she weaves through crowds and slips through lanes and crosses bridges stretching over the craters. Paying heed to nothing, she runs and runs—until she doesn’t.

The square in which all the streets and avenues seem to be converging is massive. Ahsoka stands in the middle of the road and people bump into her shoulders and brush past her; only distantly she registers the noise of the crowds and the whizzing of the speeder cars.

The unfamiliarity of the opulence and variety all around is both exhilarating and head-spinning, it simultaneously excites and reminds Ahsoka of how lost she is. She thinks of Coruscant, of its towering buildings so similar and yet so unlike those of Mondder, and a sudden rush of homesickness wraps into a coil under her sternum.

It’s not Coruscant. It’s a city she doesn’t know, it’s a whole world she doesn’t know—but she will get by.

She’s forced to ask around to get an idea of where she needs to go. A few directions, a quarter of an hour of walking—and she’s at a tram station, where several public holobooths line up in a row just outside the glass doors.

Before she can crouch down by force of habit and look under one booth for a chance at easy rewiring, she remembers herself and turns around to carefully sweep her eyes over the tram station’s roof ledge.

Security cameras. Figures.

The transmission will have to remain traceable, Ahsoka thinks with resignation. When she turns back to the holobooth and begins to punch in a code sequence, however, she finds that she also needs a call card to be able to use the thing in the first place.

Curses on her lips, hands on her hips, she paces up and down the street in front of the station, throwing glances at the ticket vendors in the kiosks on the other side of the glass doors. More cameras on the inside, too. No mind tricks, no credits—no call card.

Sucking in a harsh breath through her teeth, she pulls her hood tighter over her head and comes to a relative stillness by one of the booths.

Minimize suspicious behavior, at least, while she thinks.

The occasional pedestrian walks by, cars and speeders rush past; the chrono on the wall inside the station seems to change its minute digits so slowly it feels like time stands still altogether. Ten, twenty, thirty minutes—the internal tick of every second flows in tune with Ahsoka’s pulse and she can no longer take a fulfilling, steady breath as she flits her eyes up and down the street, lips pressed in a line, arms wrapped tight around herself. Quick taps of the foot on the ground, nails digging into the fabric at the backs of her elbows, hard, dry blinks.

The chrono ticks off 0930 hours.

The tram arrives two minutes later, spills out its passengers, and zooms past. People fill the station, stream out onto the street through the sliding doors.

As they walk by, Ahsoka lands her eyes on every single one.

A Rodian walks up to a holobooth, a couple booths down from Ahsoka’s. Ahsoka shifts her weight on her feet, turns to her booth to at least try not to look like a loiterer.

The Rodian makes his call. Finishes up.

Ahsoka swallows and, as casually as she’s currently able, makes her way over to him just as he begins putting away his wallet.

“Hi,” she summons her most friendly smile, but feels the unnatural strain of it in her cheeks. “Excuse me. I’m sorry to bother you. Could you please tell me how to get to the city’s lower levels?”

The Rodian blinks at her.

“Sure,” he mutters slowly, and, with his free hand, reaches into his coat’s inside pocket to pull out a holopad. “Here, it’s easier to just show you on the map...”

The words tune out immediately as Ahsoka inches closer to peer at his holopad. She interjects his explanation with nods and hums where appropriate while her sensory attention fixes in its near entirety on the call card that peeks out of the wallet he’s holding in his other hand.

The angles of their bodies, Ahsoka hopes, are enough to keep the cameras from catching the card’s short trip through the air, from the wallet to her hand and right under the poncho.

“…and then one more right, and that’s where you’ll find the lifts.” The Rodian turns to her. “Any of that make sense?”

“Yes, absolutely.” Ahsoka gives him another smile. “That’s a great help, thank you so much.”

“For sure. Have a good one.” The man puts away his belongings and, with an amiable nod, turns to leave. Ahsoka turns in the opposite direction herself and walks for a couple of minutes—then, turns around, and having made sure the Rodian is nowhere to be seen, briskly walks back.

To hell with the cameras—by the time she’s near, she’s practically sprinting. 

She skids to a stop, grabs onto the walls of the booth to exhale a lengthy breath. Pulls out her card with trembling fingers, slides it through the reader, types in the code sequence with a mad speed of muscle memory.

Send signal.

She waits.

And waits.

_Rex. Rex, buddy, come on._

And waits.

Break off the signal after a full minute. Slide the card once more, type in the sequence again, now slower and much more attentive, make sure every letter, every digit is correct. Send signal.

Wait.

Wait.

Mouth his name, whisper it with no sound, tap impatiently on the durasteel beside the keypad. Wait. Take a deep breath.

Break off the signal. Slide the card, type in a new sequence, slow and careful.

Anakin will answer. 

Slide the card. Retype the sequence. Resend signal.

Break off signal. Move to a different holobooth just in case. Slide the card. Type the sequence. Send signal. 

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

The Force is noisy—the planet teems with life. The stream of clarity is muddied, and Ahsoka fails to center herself, let alone sense anything or anyone.

She clenches her teeth, grips the edge of the booth stand till her knuckles whiten, digs her nails painfully into the surface.

She calls Rex again.

He doesn’t answer.

She calls Obi-Wan—neither does he.

She calls Padmé, and her breath hitches when the transmission finally sparks into a dim, slowly rotating blue symbol of the Galactic Senate.

_“You’ve reached the office of Senator Padmé Amidala. Unfortunately, I’m unavailable at the moment, but please leave your—”_

With a desperate moan, Ahsoka slams the button to end the transmission. She clutches her temples and clenches her eyes shut as she tries to remember the sequence to Padmé’s personal holoprojector—only to doubt if she ever knew that sequence to begin with. She’s never needed to use it, after all.

Tightness builds in her throat. Her hands turn cold and clammy and she clenches and unclenches her fists in order to bring the life back to her fingers, but it only somehow underscores the futility of the situation.

The tightness rises and moves upwards, moisture gathers at the edges of her eyes. Ahsoka blinks to chase it away before it can get the better of her, swallows the coil in her throat, and clutches the call card till its plastic edges dig into her palm.

Breathe in, breathe out. 

In. 

Out.

Even out the breath. Calm down.

In.

Out.

Take it from the top.

Slide the card. Punch in the sequence to Rex’s comm all over again.

Wait.

And wait.

*

As soon as she sees him, the young Twi’lek woman behind the counter twitches and shoots her eyes downwards. When Maul crosses the room over to her, she lowers her chin to her chest altogether. 

It’s well past closing time—the store is vacant and dimly-lit.

“Is he in?”

The Twi’lek nods stiffly, keeping her head down even as her eyes dart about. She fidgets for a moment before quickly setting aside whatever was occupying her hands, and briskly walks to the back of the store.

Maul needs no invitation to follow.

She leads him through the service room out back and down two flights of stairs, to a door of thick, heavy durasteel. Two bangs on the door, and as soon as dull noise of an opening latch comes through from the other side, she hurriedly retreats into the store above.

The door slides open, and, on the other side of it, the Pyke’s eyes widen.

“…Lord Maul...”

“Vakim.”

At once—a bent head, a gasp not yet fully loosened. Vakim steps to the side to usher Maul through, and the door slides shut behind them with a slam.

“My lord— I— This—” He takes a moment to steady his breath. Frowns, in a sort of disbelief. “…I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I know,” Maul assures, “worry not. I wasn’t exactly expecting to be here, either.”

“Then—why? How? When did you—?” Vakim stammers, but then cuts himself off before long. He shakes his head, clasps his hands together in a moment of collecting himself. When he manages it, he fixes his eyes on Maul’s and stretches his lips into a wide smile. “Forgive me,” he breathes, “I’m just surprised, that’s all. You have no idea how much of a relief this is. Things have been... well... quite trying, let’s just say that.”

He rubs his hands together in an excited, fidgeting manner, and then moves further into the room. “Please, please, come in. The place is a bit messy, hope that isn’t much of a problem.”

Maul simply gives an accommodating hum as he looks around. All just as he remembers it—a messy technician’s shop that’s much larger than it looks at first glance, junk hanging off the walls and ceiling, crates of various shapes and sizes littering the floor and forming stacks by multitudes.

“You’ve got a new girl out front,” he notes, watching as his host clears an area off the table in the center of the room.

“Ah, yeah. But don’t worry, she won’t talk.” Vakim looks up from his things and bares his teeth in an ugly grin. “She’s mute.”

An arched brow suffices as a response.

When Vakim is done, he braces his spindly arms on the table. “So, my lord. How can I help you?” His eyes rove downwards. “How are your legs, by the way?”

Maul steps up to the table. “Satisfactory.”

“Everything working alright? I can take a look, if you’d like.”

“Later, maybe. I’ll get to the point—I need you to sell something for me.”

“Of course. Anything.”

Maul unclips his lightsaber from his belt, pulls the two kyber crystals out of his pocket, and places the whole set on the table.

Vakim draws his head back in bemusement. “Well, uh… I’ll tear your saber down. What about the shinies? Could hold on to them for you.”

“No. I won’t be needing them.” 

“Really?” He waits for Maul to nod, then gives a curt hum. “You sure?”

“I need you to wait for a bit, and then send them out into circulation. Get them far from the Pyke sectors. Follow procedure, cover your tracks—you know the drill.”

“Goes without saying.”

“Should Sidious be monitoring the markets, he’ll get word of them eventually.”

“Ahh.” Now Vakim nods deeply with realization. He picks up one of the crystals and pinches it between his thumb and forefinger, then rolls it around in his hand as he casually inspects it. “Make him think you’re MIA, huh? Not many bled kybers floating around, that’s for sure.”

“He won’t be fooled, but it’ll throw him off. Buy me some time.”

“Right. Plus, word’s sure to even reach the cartels.” Vakim puts the crystal back down, slides it near the other one and straightens out both so that they’re neatly lined up with each other. He moves the lightsaber frame off to the side and braces his arms on the table once again, fixing his eyes on Maul’s. “They’re looking for you, you know. Krim. Moj. Vos. Not entirely sure what Vos wants with you, but Krim wants you dead.”

Maul scoffs. “Krim is an insect.”

“That he is, but he has men. Seeing as you escaped, you’re presumed alone and vulnerable. The bastard’s put a bounty on your head even before Palpatine did.”

“Balls of steel he’s got.”

Vakim laughs. “Krim’s a damn snake. You look him in the eye and he’s shaking in his boots, you turn away for one second and he’s already plotting a mutiny. Not to mention Fife whispering in his ear—I’ll bet all my money he’s pulling all the weight.”

Maul drums his fingers on the edge of the table, then pulls up a chair and takes a seat. “How recent’s the intel?”

“Oh, just from after the Mandalore stunts. That whole deal shook everything up a fair bit, things started moving quickly. Even somewhat uncomfortably so.” Vakim does the same on his side—sits down and leans forward over the table, propping himself on his elbows. “But here’s the thing, my lord. The group splintered. They’re gonna want to make you think they’re all strong and coordinated, but they aren’t. Far from it.” As if anyone could overhear them, he suddenly lowers his voice. “There’s many who turned over to your side in your time, you know that. I’m lucky to still have my place set up here, though that’s not going anywhere now—with the whole Jedi hunt I expect there’ll be plenty of glowsticks to fence. But we’re scattered. Scattered, but waiting for your word. Rest assured, you still have followers. _Real_ followers. Loyal men. I promise you, I’m not the only one to still call you ‘lord.’”

For a few moments, Maul sits still and simply holds Vakim’s magenta gaze. There’s no trickery in it, no characteristic Pyke duplicity. None of that surrounding him in the Force, either—only tried-and-true, grave sincerity.

Good man. Maul’s not come to expect anything less.

“And that’s just the Pykes?” he asks.

“As far as I’m aware. I’ve little influence with Black Sun, but, on the whole, I’m told they’re being hostile. Whatever the reason.”

“Actively hostile?”

“I’m... gonna say ‘no’. If they were, I’m sure I’d hear more about it.”

“Just friction, then.” Maul rubs his jaw in thought. Krim hardened since his last squabble with Moj a few months ago. With everything going on, Moj might not want to openly rekindle old flames just yet. “Not much reason not to expect them to take some time to regroup on Mustafar, it seems.”

“Sounds likely.” Vakim leans back in his chair and lightly snaps his fingers a few times, as if to help him think. “I’ve been trying to keep my eyes peeled for other things, though. As this is only the second week since the upturn, I’m a bit low on details, forgive me. But. Krim bends whichever way the wind’s blowing, that’s no secret, but Vos with his new guys—he’s skeptical. A little on the fence about staying partners, I think. From what I hear, Krim and him are having... disagreements.”

“Is that so.”

“He seems to be growing less keen on sharing resources.” Vakim watches as Maul rises from his seat and begins to pace gently around his side of the room. “Couldn’t tell you for sure, but I reckon he’s not especially excited about Krim’s open hostility towards you.”

Maul takes a moment to mull over the words, and nods, slow and absent. “This is good news.”

Vakim sounds pleased, even excited. “I was hoping you’d say that.” He tilts his head to the side as he watches the other. “You sure you don’t want me to take a look at you? Your prostheses aren’t exactly looking… great.”

The offer pulls Maul out of his musings, and he turns to look at his host. Then nods once again. “Fine. But I don’t have all night.”

“Understood.” Vakim springs up and heads over to the back of the room, to one of the walls lined with countless shelves filled with everything imaginable. “Just a checkup, I won’t keep you long. Have a seat.”

Maul slides the kyber crystals over to his lightsaber frame, then rolls up his pant legs a little before sitting himself on the table.

“Anything bothering you? What’s working, what isn’t?”

Hooking the tip of his foot underneath the chair’s seat, Maul drags the thing closer to rest his right foot on it. “Right knee’s been acting up,” he says under his breath.

“Yeah?” Vakim comes back with a set of tools and pulls down the lamp that’s mounted on the frame under the ceiling. “In what way?”

“It’s fine now. But a couple days ago something jammed up, loosened a screw.” With narrowed eyes, he watches Vakim’s long fingers running deftly over the knee, hands applying pressure here and there to gently push the leg one way or another for easier inspection. “I didn’t meddle with it much. Just screwed in what I saw sticking out at first glance and that fixed it, but something’s just been…”

Vakim hooks a finger under the bottom edge of the plate serving as a kneecap and tugs it back to its limit of a couple of centimeters, only to release and let it snap back against the joint with a soft click. “Clicking?”

Maul brow twitches at the same sound that’s been driving him mad in the past three days. Quiet, nearly silent, but nonetheless noticeable enough through sensory perception to serve as a source of constant irritation. “Yes.”

“Well, no wonder, this thing’s loose as a hooker.” Vakim lets out a throaty sigh and leans closer. “And what’s—” he twists his lips as he slides one of his fingernails through a crevice, “what’s this gunk?”

“Swamp. Bad landing.”

“Sw—” Vakim clears his throat. Then sighs once more. “My lord, I’ll advise to clean that out properly. Surely, you can spare a few hours, I’ll take off the plating, clean the interiors—”

“No. Leave it.”

“But—”

_“Leave it.”_

Vakim draws back, raising his hands in a resigned gesture of _suit yourself._

He turns to his toolkit on the table, picks out a small, cordless drill. “You’ve got tight spaces in there. With buildups of moisture, eventually, you’re gonna rust. From the inside.”

Not so resigned, then. Maul tightens his lips. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

Another heaved sigh. “Fine, I hear you. Just stay away from water from now on, at least. I _will_ clean your knee, though—that’s off the table. Gonna need to replace the whole kneeplate, the coupling’s busted…”

“How long will it take?”

“Don’t fret, don’t fret, I’ll be done in a jiff.” Vakim rises once again to go back to his stocks of supplies and parts and everything else that holds up his front of making an honest living. “Have you forgotten how fast I work?”

Maul huffs. “Well, it’s been a while.”

“True that. Tell you what, I should have those replacement plates somewhere… around… here… a-ha.”

When he’s back, he sets another box on the table, this one filled with parts of, as it looks, similar function but various form and size. He digs through it, fishes out a piece of plating and holds it up to Maul’s knee. Mutters something under his breath, swaps the piece for another one and settles on that.

“It’s not exact,” he says, “but I think it’ll do. This one work for you?”

Maul arches a brow in mild surprise that his opinion is being taken into account at all. He nods absently for complete lack of preference. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Perfect.” Vakim sets his plating of choice next to the drill, then goes to fetch his chair before adjusting the angle of the overhanging lamp once more and, after, taking a seat next to Maul. “Just sit back, relax. This’ll be quick and painless.” He snickers curtly at his own sense of irony, shifts Maul’s leg to a position most convenient for his ministrations, and gets to work.

Minutes later, with the old kneeplate off and the mechanisms directly underneath cleaned, he pokes the problem screw in the joint’s side with a tool.

“You said a screw went loose. This the one?”

“Yes.”

“Well, to be frank, with mechanisms like these it could be any one of them.” Vakim swaps out his tool for an electric screwdriver, clicking his tongue as he grumbles under his breath. “Huge gaps in the plating, unprotected screws… I’m not even mentioning the joints… the most vulnerable damn places, and practically fully exposed.

“Tsk, Vizsla’s morons. If I were back in my old lab… me and the boys would have built you up to be state-of-the-art.”

“This is…” Maul tightens his jaw. “…Suitable.”

“Right. Suitable. Crude and unwieldy, that’s what it is. I swear, my lord, had I the means...”

“The… thought is appreciated, Vakim.”

“Hell, could have made you weatherproof, to keep those swamps out. Light, elegant design, one actually suitable— no, _worthy_ of your talents. Prostheses to complement your prowess, not take away from it. Something… something that could truly be considered a replacement. An _improvement.”_

 _Just fix the damn knee,_ Maul almost grates, but the tightness of his teeth clenched together keeps the words locked in his throat. He makes no sound, moves no muscle—merely keeps staring at one of many clumps of dust on the floor.

When the screw is discarded and a new one is properly secured in its place, Vakim begins work on attaching the new kneeplate.

“You know, if there’s one good thing about those Death Watch wonder-craftsmen, it’s that the parts they use fit with pretty much anything. There’s a certain beauty to it, I suppose. Primitive, but versatile—gotta hand at least that to them.” 

All of a sudden, he chuckles and lightly shakes his head in amusement. “Man, I probably still have that box of spare fingers lying around somewhere. Opress must have broken off about half a dozen of his, what with the might behind those swings and all…”

He trails off, his hands come to a still.

The whirring of the drill peters out into silence.

“I, uh.” The tentative tone is an utter contrast to the one before it. Vakim frowns and rubs the lower half of his face. Closes his eyes. Opens them. “Right. My lord, I… I heard. I’m sorry for your loss.”

A tick of the imaginary chrono. Another. Maul slowly moves his eyes to the side and down, to meet the other’s stare of disgustingly apologetic magenta.

His voice is quiet, calm, and yet just as steely as his gaze.

“What loss would that be, Vakim?”

Vakim manages to hold eye contact for only a moment. When he breaks it and fixes his stare back on the knee, he blinks, swallows. Clears his throat.

The drill comes back to life.

“Almost done,” he says after a couple of minutes, and gives a couple of gentle test tugs on the plating. “Just a couple of finishing touches… The coupling should hold much better, nothing should be falling out or flapping or clicking or whatever else your hearts may desire.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“Of course, I would love to touch up your other knee, but I’ll take what I can get.” One, two more drives of screws, and Vakim puts his tools aside and tugs on the kneeplate once again, now from multiple angles and with varying degrees of force.

“There,” he grins when the quick inspection of the other knee and ankle joints leaves him satisfied. “Good as new. Well, I mean—I wish.”

Maul huffs and, at last, slides off the table to stand freely. He takes a few steps back and forth, bends and unbends his right leg, listening intently for any kinks in the mechanisms and for once not finding any. 

“Fine work, Vakim.”

“I try, my lord. I try. As quick a fix as you’ll get—I know you’re just dying to get out of here.”

As he puts away his tools, Maul watches him coolly out of the corner of his eye and takes to pacing in front of the table again. 

“Yes, about that,” he mutters and crosses his arms. He waits for Vakim to free up his attention and return to the table before continuing. “I’m sure you understand this is a time like no other for heightened caution.”

Vakim leans his hip against the table’s edge, crosses his arms as well, and inclines his head in a show of careful attentiveness. 

“Of course,” he says.

“We need to lay low and wait this out, Vakim. There’s too much attention on us. Too many seeking eyes. One thing, though: soon, before I leave off-world, I may bring you a couple more crystals.”

“Oh, yeah?” Vakim draws his head back and shoots an intrigued grin. “That’s always appreciated. You find a couple dead Jedi along the way or something?”

“Yeah. Or something.” Maul follows the other’s movements with his eyes as he goes to the back wall again, only now he moves a stack of crates out of the way and unlocks the door behind it, popping into the room for a moment. “But after that, I’m gone. You will hear from me again, never doubt—but not for a while.”

“Understood. Do what you must,” Vakim soon returns with a locked durasteel case and an old, nondescript satchel and places both on the table. “No clue where you’re headed, never saw you.”

“Good man.” Arms crossed, Maul watches as the other opens the case and begins to lay out stacks of credit chips. At the sight of money he begins to idly rub the side of his jaw with the back of his knuckles.

Before he takes to counting with more precision, Vakim stops what he’s doing and meets Maul’s gaze. “I can tell you’re thinking, my lord. I’m all ears.”

Maul shifts his jaw, rubs the fingertips of one hand together. “Your moles within Krim’s ranks. All accounted for?”

“Yes. Of course.” When Maul stays silent for a few more moments, Vakim presses on. “Anything to be taken care of?”

Another pause. Then—

“Send out word to your best men,” Maul sharply says. “Get them in on this, too. As I said—heightened caution. You will carefully screen every collaborator, no matter how veteran. Vet every new addition. Anybody who so much as thinks about stepping out of line is to be eliminated. No first warnings, no exceptions.”

Vakim nods, hums in understanding. “What about Black Sun? I can try to get word, get ahold of any sympathizers.”

“If they’re smart, they’ll come to you. Otherwise, don’t waste your resources.” Furrowing his brow slightly at the floor, Maul rubs his fingers together again in idle contemplation. “Vos, on the other hand…”

“…is a wild card.”

“Yes, but one we need. He’s not fully committed, you said?”

A huff. “He’s certainly not fond of Krim.”

Maul nods, taps his knuckles against his other hand’s palm in a soft rhythm. “Sidious will seek to disturb the markets in hopes of gaining control, that I can guarantee, and if Krim doesn’t act fast and readjust, some of his dealers might run dry... sooner than expected.” Once again, Maul takes to pacing. “And Krim knows this. He needs Crimson Dawn—he knows that too. Vos’s wavering makes him nervous. He’ll grow desperate, start acting out irrationally.”

Vakim’s lips slowly stretch into a grin. “And you want to rock that boat.”

“Naturally.” Maul’s own smirk mirrors, albeit to a lesser extent, Vakim’s predatory thrill. “Now, as for Crimson Dawn—you will get a few men on the inside. Make sure Vos’s people continue having second thoughts. Keep the uncertainty alive. Fuel it. Stoke it. Do the same in your circles. Eliminating Krim isn’t yet an option. It isn’t enough and might very well get messy; we need his people. We need them turned—the more voices you get on your side, the better.”

“This might be easier than it seems,” Vakim taps his fingers on the edge of the table. “Krim’s getting desperate already. He can feel his grip slipping—I reckon that’s mostly why he’s trying to send dogs after you. You’re just a cause to rally behind.”

Maul’s smirk grows. “Well then he’s playing a losing game. It will only work in our favor.”

“My lord.” Keeping his eyes locked on Maul’s, Vakim inclines his head and presses his left fist to his chest in reminiscence of a salute. “I will not let you down. All will be done.”

Maul returns the offering of respect with a curt nod. “I will expect nothing less. And hold you accountable.”

“No question about it. I will get on this immediately.” With a satisfied sigh and a finalizing clap of his hands, Vakim straightens up and smiles once again. “Anything else to go over? Otherwise, I still need to get you your money.”

“Yes, let’s wrap this up. I’ve stayed too long.”

“Nonsense. Not long enough, I’d say.” Vakim returns his attention to the stacks of credit chips, then reaches into the case to pull out more. “Alright, so. For the regular kybers I’d normally give thirty grand apiece—of course, I’d need to check the going rates, but that’s the average. Seeing as yours are bled, that’s easily thirty percent more, rounded up to ten thousand each. Sound good so far?”

“That is reasonable.”

“And I’ll top it off with five more for the pleasure of seeing you on this lovely evening.”

That earns him a scoff. “No need.”

“No, no, I insist. Consider it a bonus, seeing as you’re in a rush and all.”

“Now now, my deep-pocketed friend. You’d better hope you aren’t cutting into your own profits.”

“Please,” Vakim snorts. “These? These are no mere objects of profit, my lord. An actual, physical extension of your might? That’s practically sacred.”

“Sure, sure.” 

“Not many sacred things left in the galaxy, you know. Indulge me.” Setting aside the two hefty stacks, Vakim reaches for the lightsaber and sets it down in the middle of the table. “Now, the frame is a tad more tricky. As is—ten grand, easy. But I assume you don’t want it sold whole.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I thought so. In that case, I regret to say that tearing this down won’t yield nearly as much. But we can still make the best of it—are all the parts intact?”

“Don’t fret,” Maul scoffs again as he casually motions with his hand for the lightsaber to disassemble on its own. “This is all too generous already. Take it for free.”

“Out of the question.” Vakim leans down to have a better look at the weapon’s interior. “Both emitters with the matrix, power cells… rivets look like they’re all in place... Alright, thank you.” The parts assemble back into a whole. “Seeing as everything’s accounted for—and in good condition at that—I can give you six thousand. I feel that’s fair.”

“Too fair. This is unnecessary.”

Vakim is happy to ignore him. “Then it’s settled! Your total is… ninety-six thousand. Let me round that up to a hundred—”

 _“No,_ Vakim.” Maul snickers and shakes his head. “Calm down. This is more than enough.”

Finally, the other sighs in amused resignation. “Fine. As you wish.” Vakim grabs the satchel he brought previously, pulls a smaller case out of it, and locks the agreed-upon value worth of chips within it. He hands both the case and satchel to Maul. “You have everything you need? How did you even get to this rock to begin with?”

Maul places the case into the satchel and hangs the thing over his shoulder. “Hitched a ride, let’s just say.”

“Ah. I’d set you up with a ship, but my buddy Drih is a much better contact for that.”

“And where is he?”

 _“She_ is on the west side of town, two levels down. Runs a backdoor shop, deals in repurposed smuggler boats. No tracing, clear ID signature, the whole shebang. She even programs personal ID chips—but it’s gonna cost you.”

“Well,” Maul claps the side of his satchel, “I didn’t come to you for nothing.”

“Heh, right. Should I call her ahead, tell her you’re coming?”

“No, she can’t be expecting me.”

“You got it. For any special favors, just drop my name. Who knows, she might throw in some bonus on top.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” Maul briefly sweeps his eyes over the room, then settles them again on its owner. “Right, well, I’ll take my leave. It was good seeing you, Vakim.”

“My lord.” Vakim inclines his head, tuning his words momentarily to a more solemn tone. “I’m at your service. Always.”

In return, Maul nods.

“I’d wish you safe travels, but I’ll be seeing you back with more crystals soon, yes?”

“Sure.”

“Then I’ll save the goodbyes for then.” Vakim grins. “Take care, Lord Maul.”

Maul holds the eye contact, gives him another nod in reply, and then turns to leave the shop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dabbling in syndicate shit... I don't expect this'll be anything major, but I feel it might be nice to address and weave it in somehow?
> 
> also wtf I've made more ocs in this fic so far than I have in my lifetime


	6. Chapter 6

Ahsoka doesn’t know how many calls she’s tried to place. The card’s dialing limit ran out soon after midnight.

The cantina she wanders into is packed, even at this late an hour. It must be the end of the week. Any other day, the fact that she isn’t stopped at the doors would have left her concerned; the bouncer’s eyes slide off her form as if she isn’t even there.

Overly loud music. Heavy bass banging on the walls and floor and thumping through the patrons’ bodies in one collective heartbeat, a conjunct rhythm of drunken abandon. Yet another den shielded from the world in an impenetrable bubble of apathy. 

It’ll do. Ahsoka stands in the back and surveys the room, having to rise to her tiptoes to see over the heads of the people gathered around a table with an ongoing sabacc game. She quickly spots what she needs and shoulders past the untamed crowd towards the bar, eyes locked on the viewscreens hanging on the wall above it. 

There’s an empty seat all the way at the leftmost end of the bar and Ahsoka slides into it before anyone else can claim it. The viewscreens transmit generic visual noise suitable for the clubbing setting, but below the hectic images, in an uncharacteristic fashion, strips of running text recap the major recent events. Ahsoka leans forward over the bar stand to read.

_…audio recording of Jedi attempt on Emperor Palpatine’s life reviewed and accepted as admissible evidence by Judiciary Committee. Jedi Knight assassins Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar, Saesee Tiin, Mace Windu charged with high treason. Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar, Saesee Tiin apprehended and executed as per court ruling. Mace Windu on the loose, armed and dangerous. Report to your local law enforcement agency with any information. Senate Guard deployed to put down any future assails and further investigate assassination attempt. More info daily on all channels at 0900 and 2100._

_Clone army suffering losses from unexpected organized Jedi assaults. More info daily on all channels at 0700, warning: graphic imagery, viewer discretion advised._

_Jedi attack on Senate Building following attempt on Emperor Palpatine’s life pushed back by Senate and Coruscant Guard. Jedi offenders apprehended and awaiting trial or killed in conflict; necessary lethal force used. “The Jedi rebellion has been foiled, the remaining Jedi will be hunted down and defeated,” says Emperor Palpatine. All remaining Jedi pronounced traitors to former Galactic Republic and First Galactic Empire. Fugitives from justice presumed armed and dangerous. Report to your local law enforcement agency with any information. More info daily on all channels at 1100 and 2300._

_Count Dooku apprehended and executed as per court ruling. Remaining Separatist leaders apprehended and awaiting trial. Military neutralizing remaining Separatist holdouts. Clone Wars coming to definitive end._

There’s ringing in Ahsoka’s montrals. She doesn’t even hear the deafening music.

When she looks at the cycling white and blue letters long enough for them to stop making sense but still burn into her retina, she drops her eyes from the screen and stares into nothing.

Strips of that same text run through her mind, wrap around her sense of awareness and slide down to her throat with the threat of choking her out. Suddenly it gets genuinely difficult to breathe.

Ahsoka waits, a minute, another, and then gasps, tearing herself out of stupor as if all she needs to do is wake herself from a dream. But the cantina remains the same, the music still weighs down on her and the vibrations of bass heave through her body and the people around her clamor and laugh and drink.

As if nothing is happening.

As if everything couldn’t be more normal.

She doesn’t need to look—in fact, she avoids the screens on purpose while she gathers her thoughts—in order for the words to bang their heated pulse into her brain, and she almost feels their physical weight, so unbearable she wants to crack her skull open and hurl them out.

The lies. The brazen, unabashed _lies_ so great she can’t believe it, let alone hardly wrap her mind around any of them— 

Yes. That’s it. No one believes it. Of course—nobody in their right mind is so hopelessly stupid as to believe the bantha crap the viewscreens spew, there’s no way in the galaxy that anyone takes this seriously. The Jedi are keepers of the peace, soldiers merely by necessity, no matter what people say; they are _guardians of peace and justice, defenders of the Republic’s citizens,_ never in the galaxy’s _existence_ would anyone believe that they could possibly seek to overthrow the Senate and murder innocents in cold blood—

_Clone army suffering losses from unexpected organized Jedi assaults._

_clone army suffering losses_

_unexpected organized Jedi assaults_

_Jedi assaults_

That is not what happened.

That is _not what happened._

_And what happened?_

_Why were they shooting?_

_Why were they shooting at you, Tano?_

Attack on the Chancellor? _Emperor?_ That’s the new order about the coming of which Maul’s been preaching? The First Galactic Empire? The _what?_

How?

Why? What for?

Lies spewed, webs spun to advance an agenda, information bent and no doubt sugarcoated with euphemisms. All points carefully in place to present the gruesome facts that finally, after days of brewing and incandescing, ring true in Ahsoka’s temples and burn in her veins.

Why the Jedi? What did they ever do? What did Master Fisto ever do? He couldn’t possibly have committed treason without a good cause; whatever truly happened, he and the others must have been in the right; he can’t be dead, so why—

They can’t be, and yet—

Empty, consuming silence finally teeters over the edge and crashes down on her with the full force of its weight.

They’re dead. 

They’re all dead.

Master Fisto, Master Kolar, Master Tiin, Master Plo, Master Secura, Master Kenobi, Anakin, everyone else she tried and failed to reach— dead, they’re all dead, gunned down for no reason by clones and likely the Senate or Coruscant Guard and rotting cold in the ground.

_If they were one with the Force I would feel it. I would know it. I would accept it and be at peace._

_That’s what I was taught._

Instead, their essences are dissolved in the void, snuffed out like candle flames, and not even wisps of smoke are left.

Eternal life in the Force. Right.

There’s no joke more sadistic. 

Perhaps, if she were never told such follies, she wouldn’t be feeling like a gaping hole has been ripped through her very being, right where, as she always thought, _something_ should have been. They’re dead—there’s simply nothing else to it. They’re dying and they’re killing them.

_They’re killing us._

_And we did nothing wrong. We just wanted to protect the Republic. Didn’t we?_

“Hey,” a softened masculine voice tears Ahsoka out of yet another stupor, and she flinches and jerks her head to come face to face with a Kessurian in the seat next to her. “Hey, now,” he coos, and sets his drink down to shift a little closer to her. “What’s wrong?”

Wide-eyed, breathing shallow, Ahsoka can only stare.

“Such a sweet girl shouldn’t be crying. Who upset you?”

It’s almost as if the words activate some switch inside her, and she starts blinking rapidly only to realize her lashes are soaked and her cheeks are streaked with wet. The man reaches out with his hand towards her, in a gesture that Ahsoka quickly recognizes as meant to wipe her tears, and by some force of nature and unconscious self-preservation she leans away from him with an abruptness of having been shoved.

“Woah.” The man raises his hands, palms out, in a gesture of surrender. “Woah, there. It’s okay.”

 _No,_ she howls within her head, _it’s not okay. Nothing is okay._

She forgets how to speak, she thinks—there’s nothing she could say, anyway, and all she can do is gasp for breath as rough as if she’s suffocating. The man’s eyes are full of concern but it’s so meek and meaningless and _trivial_ that Ahsoka finds herself wanting to kick and scream and claw his throat bloody for having the audacity to feel anything so insignificant and unworthy of the circumstances.

She must look like a spooked animal, surely—next, as if the first warning wasn’t enough, the man puts a hand on her shoulder and Ahsoka _shrieks._

Over the music, it doesn’t sound much different than the cries of drunken patrons. The Kessurian’s hand falls away with the jerking of her body and she slaps his wrist away for good measure, eyes blazing, teeth bared in a feral snarl, and the fright she momentarily catches in his eye fills her with burning, ugly satisfaction.

“Don’t you kriffing touch me, scum—”

“Mother of Kwath, lady.” Fear quickly morphs into aggravation, and then insult. “I was just trying to help.”

Ahsoka just glares, lips parted and strained, breaths heavy. The man scoffs in offense and mutters something in another language under his breath, then calls up the bartender. Ahsoka turns away and fixes her eyes once again on the tirelessly cycling words on the screen.

_Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar, Saesee Tiin apprehended and executed as per court ruling. Mace Windu on the loose, armed and dangerous._

_Clone army suffering losses from unexpected organized Jedi assaults._

“Put this on my tab,” the Kessurian tells the bartender in Ahsoka’s periphery and knocks back the rest of his drink in one go. He shoots her a sidelong glance and slams the glass on the bar stand. She doesn’t flinch.

_Jedi offenders apprehended and awaiting trial or killed in conflict; necessary lethal force used._

“Crazy skug,” he mutters, pushes off the bar stand, and leaves.

_Fugitives from justice presumed armed and dangerous. Report to your local law enforcement agency with any information._

“He’s not worth it.”

It takes great strength to pull her eyes away and towards the voice, the screen almost hypnotic. Ahsoka locks gazes with the bartender, a Falleen woman who still stands near, across from the spot the Kessurian sat in.

“Huh?”

The woman sets down the glass she’s been wiping, her full dark lips forming a reserved, sympathetic smile. “Sitting there all alone, crying. You poor little thing. Broke up with your boyfriend or something?”

Ahsoka’s mouth drops open but the indignant exclamations die down before she can form them.

There’s no point. It’s all so futile.

This woman’s just doing her job, Ahsoka thinks, skimming over her toned arms and strong, elegant neck. Her eyes are dark. Piercing. Ahsoka gulps and mentally latches onto that sharpness, uses it to try and steady herself, great feat as it may be.

However, rather than spark the earlier hostility, the sympathy she catches in those eyes only raises the floodgate on the river of her tears even higher.

“No,” she croaks, clenching her eyes shut, and sets her elbows down on the bar stand to hold her head in her hands for how heavy it is with the pounding in her temples. “N—” the word cuts off with an uncontrolled hitch of breath and she just gulps for air and shakes her head. 

“Oh, there, there…” The bartender clicks her tongue quickly a few times, and then crouches down for a moment to reach for something on the shelves under the bar stand on her side. When she comes back up, she hands Ahsoka a thin clean rag. “Whatever’s got you so upset, I’m sure it’s not worth all those tears. Life goes on.”

Ahsoka takes the rag and wipes at her eyes, trying to calm her jerky breathing and quell the warring between the desire to give in to this momentary show of compassion, as misled as it is, and the urge to snap and tell the woman all about how she knows nothing.

“Ah, ah, don’t rub your eyes like that, they’ll stay red and itchy for ages. Just dab. Gently.”

Ahsoka heaves another breath and tries her best to comply.

“Now, you wanna tell me what’s wrong?” When Ahsoka purses her lips and shakes her head, the woman tilts her head to the side and lifts her brow ridge in melancholic invitation. Like a heavy pendulum, her long, black ponytail falls sideward and swings around her shoulder. “Come now, you can tell me. Don’t bottle it up, you’ll only feel worse.”

But she can’t. She can’t.

There’s no one she can tell, and she’s alone.

After a long moment Ahsoka nods towards the viewscreens anyway, swallowing a lump in her throat. The woman turns to where she’s looking and frowns, takes a few seconds to make out the cause of this entire display.

“Oh,” it hits her, “the news? Is that what you’re so worried about?”

Lest she say too much on accident, Ahsoka keeps her mouth shut and gives a slow, hard blink in place of a nod for which she suddenly can find no energy. 

“Well, I don’t really follow the whole politics thing closely, if I’m honest, but it’s crazy how the Jedi just turned on everyone, huh? Trying to kill that weak old man. Who in their right mind could see him as a threat? They should have picked better battles, I say—and now they’re getting what was coming to them.” Ahsoka sits, frozen and vacant, and simply stares into nothing. The ringing in her montrals is back. “But that’s nothing to cry over,” the woman props herself on her elbows and leans closer. Part of Ahsoka wants to move away, but she finds herself paralyzed. “The Clone Wars are drawing to an end! Now that’s something to celebrate. Those Core snobs, on the other hand—forget about them. Always caught up in their squabbles, making big deals out of everything and trying to stir up the whole galaxy.” With a wide smile, she reaches over the bar stand to gently pat Ahsoka on her upper arm. “Relax. The Jedi won’t hurt you. They don’t fly this far from their nest, and if they will, they’ll quickly get caught. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.”

Defeated and empty, staring right at the woman’s face and barely even registering anything she sees, Ahsoka distantly feels the tears’ free race continuing down her cheeks. She blinks once, twice before shutting her eyes and it takes the full strength of her being to manage a stiff nod in pretense of agreement.

The woman takes note and nods in turn. “Good girl.” She straightens up from the bar stand, flicks her eyes to where the clean glass is still resting beside her, and slides it over to Ahsoka. “Now, I know just the thing you need.”

Slowly, as if waking or emerging out of thick haze, Ahsoka blinks and frowns as the woman picks out a bottle from the bar’s selection behind her and then fills up about a third of the glass. 

“Uh.” Ahsoka clears her throat in an attempt to bring her voice more or less under control. “No, I—”

“Trust me,” the woman says warmly, and pushes the glass gently closer towards her. The liquid is beautiful, a warm shade of smoky quartz, alluring in its glimmer as it sloshes against the thick walls of the tumbler. “This’ll cheer you right up, I promise. Ambrostine’s a miracle.”

Ambrostine. Ahsoka’s never heard of that one before. Like any one of her peers, she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t curious to explore and try all manner of different beverages. The bartender is nothing if not encouraging, and doesn’t seem to mind her youth.

The Jedi disapproved of anything that lowers inhibitions and dulls the senses. But maybe that’s exactly what she needs right now. Take the edge off, numb the pain, if only for a little bit. Allow herself a moment of indulgence before she’s forced again to wander the streets in search of a bench to sleep on.

But reason hasn’t yet completely abandoned her.

“I— I can’t pay for this. Thank you, but—”

“Oh, honey, it’s on the house,” the woman counters as if it’s the most obvious fact in the world. “Don’t even worry about it. I just want you to cheer you up a bit.”

A knot of tension loosens in Ahsoka’s chest, and she curls and uncurls her fingers a couple of times as the scraping remnants of doubt slowly die down.

“Come on,” the woman draws out, sounding incredibly inviting, and Ahsoka almost gives in right then. “Here, I’ll even have some with you.” She brings out another glass and pours a drink for herself from the same bottle. Then licks her lips, perhaps in anticipation, leans once again on her elbows and raises the glass. Her ponytail, shiny and visibly weighty, falls beside her on the bar stand.

“A toast,” she says, “to...” She bites her lip and narrows her gaze as she takes a moment to glance off to the side in thought. When she turns back, she’s looking deep into Ahsoka’s eyes. “To happiness. And to everything being alright.”

The words drive a spike deep into Ahsoka’s chest.

But she gets ahold of herself, as much as she’s able, at least, and forces her lips to form a semblance of a smile while focusing on those warm, dark, penetrating eyes in the best attempt to divert her attention from the whirlwind in her head.

She hasn’t eaten since this—already last, to be precise—morning, but, she tells herself, she’ll go careful and slow. In the low light, the drink in the woman’s glass glimmers and Ahsoka raises her own, and soon, with less control over impulses than normal, her eyes start to wander. The loose and graceful hold on the glass, the woman’s hand a deep, dignified viridian, like the rest of her. Black claw-like nails, no doubt of their natural hue but covered with clear gloss—tasteful, by no means garish.

Elegant slopes of the clavicles peeking out from under the wide, brass-colored collar necklace.

A glimpse of the dip disappearing into the cut of the garment stretching over the full bust.

Ahsoka blinks and shakes her head, takes a deep breath.

“Uh,” she rasps. “Yeah. To... that.”

“That’s my girl.” The woman grins and clinks her glass on Ahsoka’s. “Cheers.”

Ahsoka watches her down the drink in one go, but doesn’t rush with her own. She brings her glass to her nose, swirls the liquid around and takes a moment to inhale the fumes as she’s seen people do on the HoloNet and in cantinas all over the place.

For what it’s worth, the beverage smells strong. Potent. Ahsoka takes another slow whiff and then a small sip, rolls it around a little in her mouth.

It’s not the most pleasant of tastes. But it’s interesting. A bit tart, with a slight sour note.

When she swallows, however, it burns a slow trail of fire down her throat.

Perhaps she’s doing it wrong. It won’t burn as much if she gulps it fast, she thinks.

So she takes another, much bigger sip, a bit faster this time, and doesn’t let it linger on her tongue and swallows almost immediately—but it burns just the same.

When she sets the glass down, the woman beams.

“You like it?”

Unsure, Ahsoka shrugs and inclines her head in an ambiguous nod. The woman voices her approval and maintains her attentive expectancy.

When Ahsoka takes another drink, it suddenly rushes to her head, and her eyes momentarily film over with a thin haze.

“Hooh,” she breathes as she sets the glass down again. Drums her palms a couple of times on the bar stand. Blinks, trying to regain the clarity.

The kick’s much stronger than she expected.

“Yeah?” the bartender grins. “It hitting you?”

“Yeah, a little,” Ahsoka mutters and draws out a lengthy breath. She blinks hard a few more times, rapidly, to try and dispel the fog and make sure she’s fully back and conscious. “Yeah, it’s—” she forces out a small awkward laugh. “It’s a bit strong.”

The woman chuckles, like she’s genuinely enjoying the display. “Nah.” She puts her chin on her hand, never taking her dark eyes off the other. “You’re a lightweight! That’s just precious.”

True as that may be, none of the several types of cocktails and cheap wines she’s snatched a chance of trying over the past few months hit so fast and quite like _that._ Still, she gives a sheepish shrug. “Yeah, well…”

“And even better! No shame in loosening up a bit. In fact, you seem to need it. Go on.”

“Uh,” Ahsoka smiles, awkward and crooked, “I think that’s enough for me, for now.”

“Nonsense.” Perhaps it’s the alcohol that’s impairing her vision, but, for a brief second, she thinks she sees those dark eyes turn vulturine. “You don’t want to waste that, now, do you? It’s expensive liquor.”

The smile was already strained and forced to begin with, but now it freezes on Ahsoka’s face in a startled grimace.

“I—”

“You can finish it, come on.” The warmth is back in the other’s eyes, but Ahsoka feels the weight of their stare much more acutely than before. “I believe in you.”

Ahsoka’s throat constricts in premature expectancy of the burn. She almost hesitates to move her eyes away, but still quickly glances down at her glass to gauge how much is left.

By non-alcoholic standards, it’s nothing. This right here, however, seems like an ocean.

Frak, she thinks, she shouldn’t have agreed to this. But seeing as she can’t pay, she has to finish this. It’s only fair. She doesn’t even want to know how much it cost.

This is going to hit hard, she thinks, but she might as well just get it over with quickly.

So she grabs the glass, breathes out, and knocks it back in three gulps.

“There you go,” the bartender raises her voice in excitement, “now you’re talking!”

Glass slammed back down, eyes and teeth clenched, Ahsoka rides out the burning wave the drink slammed into her.

When she blinks her eyes open she gasps, gulps in a chestful of air, gripping the edge of the bar stand, and finds her glass refilled.

“Uh, no—” she shakes her head, but the abrupt movement makes her dizzy and her tongue grows heavy, making her stammer. “No, no, that’s it, I’m done, thank you—”

“Come on,” the woman grins, and suddenly Ahsoka doesn’t like the look of it anymore. “Have some fun! Enjoy yourself! Nothing wrong with loosening up a little bit.”

“No, I—”

“But I used your glass again. I can’t pour it back now, and I’d really rather not toss it.”

“But I didn’t ask for it.”

“Can you pay for it?”

“What? No, I already said—”

“Then drink up.”

“No, please, I can’t. I appreciate it, truly, but I really don’t want—”

“Yes, you do.”

Ahsoka stares. Her montrals ring, her palms sweat.

Unease prickles on the back of her neck with the abruptly lowered pitch of the woman’s voice. 

“Come on.” She pushes the glass closer. “Bottoms up.”

“I—”

“Drink up. You can do it.” 

Tense and frozen, Ahsoka withstands the other’s hawkish stare with all her trembling might. This goes on for an eternity of a second, then another, until the sound of shattering glass and an especially loud cry tearing through the music somewhere on the right makes the woman whip her head towards the disruption.

“Hey!” she yells and rushes over to that side of the bar. “The hell do you think you’re…”

Ahsoka can’t make her out over the heads of people stirring in the commotion, and she isn’t allowed much time to properly try before a hand comes down on her shoulder.

She flinches, eyes startled and wild when she’s whirled around on the bar stool to face Maul.

Yellow irises gleam in the shadow of his drawn hood. With a slight twist to his lips, he flits his gaze between Ahsoka and the glass of ambrostine, then grabs hold of her upper arm. 

“We’re leaving,” he simply says, and pulls her after him. 

_Okay,_ Ahsoka thinks distantly as soon as she gets a better grip on the tangles and knots in her head. She scrambles off the bar stool and almost— _almost_ —stumbles. _Yeah. Good idea._

As she’s pulled through the crowd towards the exit, Ahsoka looks in the direction of the commotion that distracted the bartender and, through the buzzing and tingling in her head, makes out a fight broken out between two patrons and two clones.

Fear and panic surge over her like cold water.

How long have the clones been there?

What was she thinking, letting her guard down like that?

Before she can try and answer her own questions she finds herself in the cool night air of the outside, and, realizing how stuffy the cantina was in comparison, takes a deep breath.

Maul continues tugging her along and she finds she’s glad for the support, rough as it is, for she isn’t sure she’d be able to keep up on her own in this state.

When they’re far enough away, he lets go. Slows his pace. 

Ahsoka trails after him, breathing deeply in vain hope of calming the swaying between her temples. When she speaks, her own voice takes her aback with how scratchy and raw it is.

“How did you find me?”

Maul walks on, silent. Only now does Ahsoka realize he’s carrying something. Some sort of bag.

“Why?”

Again, he says nothing. Ahsoka drops the query but her thoughts barrel back the the cantina and those clones she caught a glimpse of. 

The carelessness. The impermissible risk of being spotted and discovered.

But they were drunk. They wouldn’t know.

But, had she given in and drank more, there’s no knowing if there'd be anything to stop her from raining down all her woes on the bartender. The woman would have raised a commotion and Ahsoka would have had to run, again, as far as she could, trying to lose the pursuers in a city she doesn’t know.

She shudders.

She’s a fugitive now. A wanted criminal with no way to prove her innocence—not this time.

This long-brewing realization, the conscious grasp of this fact crashes down on her like a pile of bricks.

In the relative quiet of night, in the absence of the deafening cantina music, the gaping hole in the Force is as silent as Ahsoka has been led to believe it couldn't ever be. It tears all air out of her chest, sucks it out, and in that vacuum between her ribs forms a little black hole of her own that grows and eats away at her core, rending to shreds and consuming all remnants of strength and faith.

She thinks of Jedi, her friends and her mentors whom she loved and looked up to and treasured, despite everything, even after she left. She thinks of everyone who gave her a home and a family, everyone who brought her up in this world.

Their faces are pale and lifeless before her eyes.

It’s the same image that came to her aboard the Republic shuttle. That time she couldn’t tell a Force dream from a simple trick of the subconscious, she let it fill her with frigid dread but ultimately pushed it out and locked the gate to her mind.

Now, she can’t. She can’t erase the truth, no matter how hard or fast she blinks; she can’t unsee it no matter how tightly she shuts her eyes, she simply can’t dispel their hollow stares and bloodless flesh.

All she can do is look.

She shakes.

She shakes all over, her chest trembles with tattered scraps of breath. Her fingers and knees buzz and tingle, they feel hollow and brittle and Ahsoka almost doesn’t realize how she trips over nothing and stumbles to the ground.

The heels of her hands scrape against the asphalt as she catches herself, but she hardly notices. She stays kneeling, not bothering or even thinking about getting up as dry, coarse sobs heave through her body and tear out of her throat, one after another after another.

Even if the tears return, she doesn’t register them. Her eyes simply burn.

She wishes they’d burn out of her sockets so that she wouldn’t need to keep looking.

“Tano.”

_Stop looking. Don’t look._

“Tano. Get up.”

Ahsoka chokes on her own breath with the next sob, and then begins to retch. Her gut flips and folds in on itself but nothing comes out, leaving her dry-heaving and swallowing tears.

Stop, she tells herself in an echo of Maul’s words, get up. Pull yourself together.

The ground has never looked so appealing. She wants to curl into a ball and melt into rain water and seep through the storm drains into oblivion.

_Why?_

She registers herself speaking only post factum.

“Why?” she croaks once again, louder, harsher, and raises her inflamed eyes to Maul. The cool air slashes at her sclera like a knife. “What’s the point?”

She’s met with unsurprising silence, then pulls in a breath and looks around. An empty alley. Dark and quiet, save for the dim light of lampposts and the whizzing of cars in the faraway distance. 

Maul stands, still as a statue, and merely looks back. Ahsoka can’t read his expression.

“Answer me, Maul, why are you here? Why are we here? Where are we going? Where are you taking me? Why?

“What do you need me for? What do you want with me? You could have left me to wander and starve and get gunned down in some alley like everyone else, you could have already been on your way to—wherever, you could have— Why am I—”

“You’re drunk. Calm down and get yourself off the ground.”

“Yes, I’m drunk, and I have a kriffing right to be,” Ahsoka spits. “They’re dead, Maul. They’re all dead. But you don’t care. You couldn’t possibly care, you don’t even know what that is.”

Neutral, detached, he holds her stare, and fire builds in Ahsoka’s throat.

She wants him to sneer and snarl and spit angry curses. She wants him to snap and shout and fling accusations, she wants him to hurt, she wants him to rage, she wants him to react and respond to her _somehow._

If he wants to bring her along so badly then she‘d rather he drag her by her montrals so she can have a reason to kick and scream and curse him, she’d rather he try and hurt her so she can fight back, she’d rather he use force so she can use it in turn, feel the sting of scraped bloody skin on her knuckles, feel the rush of adrenaline and rage, feel something other than this hollow, burning numbness—

“They’re dead,” she cries, but her voice fails her. “They’re killing them. They’re murdering Jedi for no reason and making up excuses, they’re killing me, they’re killing everything I love, _you have no idea what that’s like.”_

There’s nothing else to weep with, no more sobs to choke on. Chest heaving, Ahsoka merely glares at Maul as he stands and looks at her and waits.

She doesn’t know how long they stare at each other like this. It might be a few seconds, it might be an hour.

Maul’s voice is quiet when he breaks the silence—and, were it anyone else’s, it could almost be described as gentle.

“I’m the last person you need sympathy from, you know that.”

To her horror, in the most uncontrollable of visceral reactions, Ahsoka finds herself disagreeing.

Suddenly, finally, she has nothing to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay for them falleen pheromones am I right


	7. Chapter 7

In her dreams, there’s lava and scorching heat.

It’s nothing specific or familiar. There’s no clear sense of any place, no defined landmass she’s standing on. She’s not standing, in fact. She’s falling, and as she falls the heat grows stronger, laps and licks at her flesh and sends her skin bubbling with welts, but she doesn’t feel the pain. 

Or, rather, she does. But it doesn’t hurt her, not really—she merely feels the presence of it, cognizes the fact of its happening, but her mind and senses are elsewhere.

She only knows that, at some point, the fall will come to a stop. At her destination, the lava will engulf her. It isn’t even really an active thought, but rather just a fact existing both within and outside the realm of her consciousness, a piece of innate knowledge.

At some point, indeed, the fall does stop.

 _Now_ she actually feels the pain as she’s slammed flat against hard, warm rock.

It’s not what she expected, but she lives, at least. This is all the thought that floats through the mind of her dream vague self, right before the rock beneath her vanishes and, again, she falls.

Again—pain of a hard impact. Warm rock. Falling.

It all repeats.

And repeats.

*

With effort, feeling as though her strength has been sucked out of her body through a tube, Ahsoka manages to lift her eyelids.

It’s dark enough for her eyes not to hurt. There’s heavy tension in the back of her sockets, discomfort that’s echoed in the irregular pulsing in her temples. Somehow, instinctively, she knows not to move lest she usher in the more unpleasant symptoms of such a condition.

_So this is the infamous hangover._

Never before has she had an opportunity to reach this point. The thought curls with wary confusion in her head—she only had one drink, she shouldn’t be feeling its effects to such a drastic extent.

Thinking back to the actual drinking, though, she recalls the way it hit her at just a few sips. She marvels at the sheer strength of the stuff. Although—and that’s a more likely theory, she thinks—maybe ambrostine just doesn’t agree with Togrutan biology.

The lady was trying to get her drunk. She obviously knew which poison to pick. 

Away from that place, with a clear, albeit pounding, head and a chance at proper reflection, the betrayal hits hard. 

And it hurts. Bitterly, Ahsoka tightens her lips—then draws in a breath too quick and her throat closes up at the abrupt promise of rising bile. 

Grimacing against the sour taste in her mouth and the pain hammering at all the possible zones of her head, Ahsoka rolls with effort onto her side, blinks to adjust her eyes to the low light, and freezes.

In the chair on the far side of the room, next to a covered window, Maul sits casually. In his lap, a datapad—a cheap, simple model provided temporarily by the motel’s room service. 

For a brief moment his eyes flick up to acknowledge Ahsoka before returning to the screen.

“You’re awake.”

Instead of supplying him with a response, Ahsoka darts her eyes around the room. Next to Maul’s chair, below the window: that same new bag from last night. By her bed, hanging over the back of another chair: her poncho.

Ahsoka clenches her teeth to crush a spike of worry before it can properly flare up. She flits her eyes to Maul and then back to her poncho, vaguely recalling herself throwing it on the floor first thing upon entrance and then immediately collapsing into a deep sleep.

It hurts her brain, but with enough focus, she can make out the hint of silhouette and visible weight of the objects in the poncho’s pockets. She looses a small sigh of relief. In any case, she assures herself, if Maul wanted to steal her lightsabers, he would have done just that and wouldn’t have stuck around.

Same with her crystals. Surely, he knows she would check at the first opportunity. As soon as her headache dies down.

Content for the time being, Ahsoka clenches her eyes, then relaxes her eyelids again and groans as she fruitlessly tries to find a position on her side that would relieve her of her pains.

After a couple more minutes of silent suffering, she brings up a hand to rub her face. “What time is it?”

Maul takes only a moment to answer. “Eleven-forty-two.”

That gives her pause. “Of...?”

“Morning.”

That brings some solace, at least. 

Not that it matters. It’s not like she has anywhere to be.

The distant threat of nausea begins to take a more aggressive approach and Ahsoka tries to banish it with rapid, shallow breathing. When the advance falls away, she thinks it might be worth to try and distract herself.

“You’ve been sitting there all morning?” she asks, eyes closed and voice rough with lack of moisture in her throat.

“Well, no. I got some breakfast.”

“Oh.”

“There are protein bars on the table. I wasn’t entirely sure which ones to get, so there’s a few flavors. All should be fine for your diet, but double-check just in case— when you’re able to eat, anyway.”

The notion is well-placed. Ahsoka hasn’t had any food in more than a rotation, and while both her reason and stomach demand she eat at once, she fears she wouldn’t be able to without vomiting.

For acknowledgment’s sake, she manages a short hum and rubs her eyes. “Is there water?”

In place of a reply, she hears rustling, and soon opens her eyes to find Maul on his feet. He makes his way to the table, out of her sight at this position, and then walks over to place a plastic bottle on the chair by the bed before returning to his spot and sitting back down.

It takes tremendous effort to keep the nausea down while she slowly sits up.

“Thanks,” Ahsoka rasps, grabs hold of the bottle, and soon welcomes the relief of cool liquid on her tongue. Cautious and unhurried, she takes small sips.

The silence presses on her montrals, but its breaking isn’t much more pleasant.

“You shouldn’t have talked to that woman.”

Ahsoka lowers the bottle to her lap and wipes her lips with the back of her hand. 

_You don’t say?_

The thought is passive, almost tired. Really, she thinks, she’s not in a position to fling sarcastic remarks on the subject.

“What did she tell you?” not taking his eyes off the datapad, Maul follows up on his own admonition.

Ahsoka clears her throat. “Nothing, she just...” She grimaces, twisting her lips. “She was just... trying to force drinks on me.”

The recollection is unpleasant even still.

Maul doesn’t miss a beat, his tone doesn’t even shift. “She’s a gangster.”

Ahsoka scoffs. “Do you just assume that every Falleen is Black Sun? What, you hang out with them for a bit, and now you suddenly know them all?”

“That bar is how her team launders credits.”

The calm certainty in Maul’s voice gives her pause. Ahsoka opens her mouth, then closes it again.

Wary, in lowered tone, she asks, “How do you know?”

Maul takes his eyes off the datapad and fixes them on Ahsoka. The look in them is almost comical: _Really?_

When she holds her ground and he realizes she’s serious, however, he sighs and gets back to skimming whatever is on his screen.

“This is not my first time in this city,” he says.

Figures. With how easily he found her last night, Ahsoka supposes that’s clear. 

“And...” she attempts to finish his tale for him, “you’ve had dealings with that group before.”

“Of sorts.”

“Like?”

There’s a prickle of annoyance in his tone now, very slight, like speaking of this at all is a mild inconvenience. “I know they’re stationed here and that is all.”

Ahsoka smothers the faint disappointment. Whatever, not that it matters. She doesn’t care enough to push—either way, she can guess what kind of business takes place behind closed doors. “Fine.” 

It's much easier to accept and process the woman as Black Sun, rather than a simple civilian with malicious intent.

That doesn’t improve the situation, though. Not by a long shot.

Ahsoka pauses the next time she’s about to take a sip of water, holding the bottle at her mouth.

“Was...” She licks her lips. Frowns. 

She supposes there’s one more possible explanation for her vehement reaction to the alcohol.

“Was I drugged?” she mutters. Quiet and uncertain, almost nervous.

Once again, Maul flicks his eyes to her, but now stays his gaze. He cocks a brow.

“You should have thought about the possibility of that before you started drinking,” he says.

Ahsoka doesn’t much care for his games at the moment. _“Was I?”_

“I have no idea. I wasn’t there.”

Ahsoka thinks back to last night and tries to remember the cold facts hidden behind the lasting aftertaste of swirling emotions. She determines that she didn’t see her drink getting spiked, at least, but then it dawns on her that she didn’t watch her second glass getting poured, either.

Cool sweat prickles the back of her neck. At least she didn’t drink that one.

The unease is quick to morph into shame that burns in her cheeks.

Stupid. 

Stupid, naive girl. Letting down her guard in an unfamiliar place, abandoning all caution and judgment.

That’s it. It was one slipup. No more of that.

She tries not to think about her breakdown in the alley. She desperately hopes Maul isn’t planning on bringing it up. Not now, not soon, not ever.

“Thanks,” she quietly says. “For, uh... getting me out of there.”

Whatever his reasons. The distraction with the clones came at the perfect moment; with the new information about the cantina, she isn’t sure she would have been allowed to leave without her having had to loose some fists.

Absorbed in whatever he’s reading, Maul only gives a short huff.

 _May I ask why?_ Ahsoka almost voices, but the question brings on heaps of shameful fresh memories and tingles of lingering despair. She tries her best to push the thoughts as far down as she can and it spikes her headache up; she clenches her eyes tight and presses the heels of her hands against her sockets, uncaring for the fact that she’s probably making it worse.

With a sigh she takes a few more sips from the bottle, then slowly gets up and heads to the refresher.

The reflection in the mirror startles her. She looks awful—as if by a flip of a switch the image draws her attention to the unpleasant tightness in the puffy flesh in her cheekbone area. The bags under her eyes are stark and prominent against her paled skin.

She really needs to eat. And, reasonably speaking, fall back on the bed and sleep straight through a full day or two.

Her shower is blissfully thought-free. Her head is vacant and she’s thankful for it—she only vaguely recalls her dream, a mess of glowing oranges and blacks, but quickly flings it out of mind.

It’s a struggle to keep her eyes open. When she comes back out, all wrapped up in the unpleasant feel of greasiness against clean skin, she vows to—somehow—get her hands on a new change of clothes at the first priority after setting foot outside this motel.

Since she’s still here, though, she goes to her poncho and checks that her lightsabers are indeed in place.

“Where’d you get the credits?” she asks, recalling vaguely how Maul paid for the room at the reception desk. She moves her eyes to the satchel by the window and nods towards it. “Is there more in there?”

Maul fixes her with a calculating, assessing stare, and Ahsoka rolls her eyes—only to wince at the pain in the back of her sockets. “I don’t want your money,” she says lowly. “I’m just curious.”

Wary, more like.

Maul returns his attention to the datapad, but his acute awareness of her is still clear. “I exchanged my kyber and lightsaber.”

Ahsoka balks. “You wh—”

Well.

She supposes Maul doesn’t need a lightsaber to present a threat.

“So quickly?” she gets back on track and asks. “How? Where?”

“If I understood correctly, you have already refused to give away your own, so I don’t see how this concerns you.”

Ahsoka clicks her tongue and tightens her lips. She doesn’t know why she still even bothers to ask questions.

She sits back down on the bed, props her elbows against her knees and rubs her temples. 

A long sigh escapes the confines of her throat. “Suppose I owe you now, huh?”

“For—?”

“I don’t know, the room, the protein bars. The... poncho, for frak’s sake. Just tell me how much it all comes out to and—”

Her words are cut off. “Please,” Maul snorts.

Ahsoka frowns. “I’m serious.”

“Then your seriousness is misplaced. Forget about it, this is nothing.”

She would greatly prefer for him not to argue and just name a sum, instead of this... indulgence. Charity.

Owing this man—however little the debt—is the last thing she needs.

“Don’t patronize me.”

Maul sighs. “Don’t take on debts you aren’t going to pay.”

Ahsoka twists her lips into a grimace. “I know what I’m doing. And this is hardly even a debt. I’ll pay it off.”

“I said, it’s nothing. Don’t worry your pretty little head.”

“And _I_ said, I’ll pay.”

Maul chuckles then, smirking as if he finds this genuinely amusing. “This… method of proving yourself is hardly one deserving of your efforts, but, alright. I’ll bite.”

Ahsoka bristles. “I’m not trying to pro—”

“If you must insist,” Maul goes on as if uninterrupted, “then, yes, from now on you are in my debt.” He sets aside his datapad and folds his hands in his lap, fixing his stare on Ahsoka. There’s a glint in his eyes, a twitch of amusement at his lips. A lothcat playing with its food. 

Ahsoka will not give him any satisfaction.

She tilts her head to the side and raises her brows, all attentive impatience. _Well? Get on with it, then._

“Let’s see,” Maul drawls, narrowing his eyes slightly and moving them away to stare into space. A neatly painted picture of contemplation.

He thinks for a couple of moments, tapping gently on the armrest; then reaches again for the datapad and punches something in. When he’s done, he nods to himself. “One hundred and fifteen... and eight decicreds. Well—seven and eight tenths, to be precise.”

Ahsoka blinks. That’s more than double the weekly allowance she used to get back in the Order.

“That’s the total?” she clarifies.

“That’s the total.”

Ahsoka sits back and crosses her arms. “Walk me through it.”

“As you wish.” Maul raises his leg to set the heel on the edge of his seat and prop his datapad-holding arm on the knee. The movement draws Ahsoka’s eyes and she notices the change on his right kneeplate.

So he even managed to squeeze a visit to a mechanic into his busy schedule. What a hustler.

Maul begins counting with the fingers of his free hand for show: “To start, four bars, four credits each—”

“Four creds for a protein bar?!”

He inclines his head in a sort of nod that’s somehow both apologetic and gibing. “It is what it is.”

“You’re kidding me. Where’d you even get them, the lobby of the governor’s visiting office?”

“Why, no, just at a shop down the block.”

Ahsoka scoffs in disbelief and shakes her head. 

Maul goes on, amused, “Mondder isn’t exactly a cheap city.”

“Yeah, well, I want to see the receipt.”

A scoff from him in return. “I don’t have a holopad on me, if you haven’t noticed, and in any case, I wasn’t exactly aware until now that I had to keep track of my spendings.”

“Fine! Then we walk to that shop and I see the prices with my own eyes.”

“Whatever you wish. Shall I go on?”

Ahsoka flicks her wrist at him. Maul nods.

“...As I was saying, four protein bars, four credits each, with an eight percent tax—that’s seventeen-twenty-eight. Moving on: fifteen credits for the poncho on Erysthes; independent vendor, no tax. You were there during the transaction—no receipt needed for evidence, I assume?”

He looks up at her with a brow raised in jeer; Ahsoka rolls her eyes and makes a dramatic show out of a nod.

“Good. That totals to thirty-two-twenty-eight. Next, the motel. One room with two beds for one night comes out to a hundred and sixty.”

“Damn,” Ahsoka drawls under her breath.

“Like I said, not a cheap place. You can check the price with the receptionist if you like, there’s no lodging tax. You’d pay for half of that, which makes the total so far one hundred and twelve, and twenty-eight... And, last but certainly not least—” he nods in Ahsoka’s direction. “The infamous ‘complimentary’ water.”

Ahsoka clicks her tongue lightly, at this point only mildly irked but casually amused. “Of course.”

“Three-fifty for the bottle. Tax exempt from resale, obviously. And herein lies your total.” Maul checks the screen of the datapad again. “One hundred and fifteen credits, seven decicreds, and eight tenths.”

And that’s just the starting amount, Ahsoka thinks. Unless she plans on sleeping outside while she scrounges the money, the number will grow. A steady eighty credits a day.

No matter. This is manageable. It’s simply a goal to work towards—much better than dealing with guilt of an absolved debt.

“Alright.” Ahsoka claps herself lightly on the knees in finalization of the deal. “Just about a hundred and sixteen credits, got it. You will have it.”

Maul’s lips stretch in a smile. “I’m looking forward to it, my lady.”

Ahsoka smiles in return, and narrows her eyes. _So you aren’t going to mention the prolonged lodging, hm?_

Alright, then. Two can play this game.

Easy as second nature, she casually reaches for her bottle. She might as well—it’s already practically paid for.

Her head’s still buzzing with heavy pressure, but at least it’s not pounding outright. The exchange turned out to be a decent distraction. 

Ahsoka takes a few sips from the bottle, and leaves the bed to revisit the refresher and splash some cold water on her face, to hurry along the headache’s retreat. When she goes back, she passes by the table and swipes a meiloorun protein bar, immeasurably thankful for the absence of nausea and looking forward to this humble meal.

Maul’s taken to reading again. Ahsoka wonders what has him so engrossed, but the thought flickers for only a second before she arrives at the obvious conclusion.

After days of dead silence and separation from the outside world, Ahsoka supposes anyone would take any first chance to soak in as much missed information as they could. She can certainly relate. The ability to dive headfirst into news, piece together the facts from various sources, and finally get a clearer sense of the overall picture seems like privilege right now, and one of the most vital objectives of the immediate future.

Mainstream media is unreliable—Ahsoka learned that the hard way. To get to the bottom of it all, to figure out where everything actually fell during and after Mandalore, they will need to do some digging.

She puts in her best effort to swallow down impending, leaden-weighted thoughts that are still just as raw as they were last night. She must not give them any excessive attention.

This is not the time. There’s no place for such emotion now. 

Not anymore.

There will be a time and a place to grieve, that she’s sure of—but it is not here, and it is not now.

Ahsoka takes a large bite of the protein bar, and the mere act of chewing creates an illusion of her strength beginning to return to her.

Yes, she thinks again, they will need to do some digging. But in order to get to that point, she first needs to rewind a bit.

She stands, leaning with her hip against the table, chewing methodically. Staring off into the middle distance. Thinking how best to approach this.

It’s not much of a dilemma, really.

So she speaks.

“I want answers.”

A few seconds pass, and she takes another bite before flitting her eyes to Maul. He isn’t looking at her.

Still, he humors her. “About—?”

“A great deal of things.”

A pause, long and heavy. “I already told you everything.”

“No,” Ahsoka says, voice low. “Not everything.”

A moment later, finally, Maul looks up to meet her gaze. Then sets the datapad aside once more. Shifts and leans back in his chair.

“Alright,” he yields. “Ask.”

 _Just like that?_ Inwardly, Ahsoka raises a brow.

Well, then. Her thoughts are a tangle she’s afraid to unravel, her questions are a maze.

But, at least, she knows where to start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maul: someone who is good at the economy help me budget this  
> Ahsoka: spend less on protein bars  
> Maul: no


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m mostly basing the events of Maul’s life on Ryder Windham’s _The Wrath of Darth Maul_

Tano is slow to speak again.

When she does, the words she pushes out are mechanical and forced, like she’s trying to distance herself from what they represent.

“The attack. The... switch.” She frowns slightly and shakes out her head, and then arrives at a euphemism-free elaboration. “On Mandalore. After, in the shuttle, you told me more about it.”

She holds a pause. Maul lets her drill him with her eyes, the look in them sharp and intent. Not necessarily hostile or accusatory, but... pointed. Seeking. 

She looks at him in expectancy, as if he can read her mind.

“I did,” says Maul. “Was I unclear in some way?”

He can guess what she’s trying to get at. Tano tightens her lips. “You knew.”

 _Does that somehow surprise you?_ “Knew what exactly?”

“What would happen. Despite being...” she pauses to find the right word, a crinkle forming between her brows, “...MIA... for so long.”

Yes, so long.

Twelve years.

It frightens him, sometimes, to think back to that number and _comprehend_ that amount of time. There are no words in all the languages he knows to describe the ceaseless madness of those years. No concepts known to sentients to illustrate what it’s like to be enchained in the eye of that vortex.

It is a curse and blessing both, the gift of the Force; his jailer and caregiver in one. It kept him alive. It kept him teetering on the very edge, so close, so deep in the core of smothering agony with no chance of gasping for breath. He wanted to live and it granted his wish. He wanted to die and it kept him begging.

He thinks that, perhaps, for a moment, he did die. For the measure of a blink in the inconceivable cosmos of time, he died and he saw the void, and what awaited him in it.

He would choose a lifetime of rabid lunacy over that in an instant.

 _What I_ knew _is inconsequential. You have no idea what I know. You have no idea what I’ve seen._

_Girl, I have tasted oblivion._

Twelve years. A third of his life taken away, sliced off and tossed into fire.

And where was she back then?

Where, who was Ahsoka Tano twelve years ago?

The girl is barely on the cusp of adulthood. She can’t be much older than he was when he passed his last trial and carved the title of Sith Lord from his flesh.

Who was she then, when everything was ripped from him? A child still in the charge of guardians and clan? Already a Padawan of the Order?

What endless suffering is that Order in, now? Is their punishment as colossal as his?

“If you’re asking me if I knew the details,” Maul speaks, “then, no. I did not know when and how it was to take place. I did not know that the clones were the key. I did not expect it right then.” 

This is partly untrue. He has felt—something. Darkness, encroaching. Dreams and dream terrors rising in frequency, all saturated and soaked with the false promise of vision and prophecy.

He could not glean certainty in those clouded depths, but he felt the impending doom. 

When the time came, he knew exactly what it was. Despite it, _because of it,_ for a moment he was at a loss—but confusion was quick to morph into something milder. Something untimely and incredibly fleeting and... bittersweet, almost tender. Nostalgia? A longing for a life long lost?

The fall of all that he’s spent his youth in preparation to destroy would have spelled his exuberance, once.

Once, he would have been the harbinger of that doom.

He is on the receiving end of it, now. On the other side, like anyone. He isn’t much more than anyone else, in that sense.

He doesn’t quite know how to make sense of it. He thinks it possible that he never might.

“Despite the lack of specifics, though,” he goes on, “it was not difficult to put two and two together when it did happen.”

He can predict the other’s expression before she assumes it: thoughtful set of lips and a slight furrow of brows, as if there’s something weighty to ponder. 

“So what did you know for sure, then?” she asks.

It’s not easy, nor especially pleasant, to tap into the cycles of memories that did their part in the attempts of breaking his mind—but Lady Tano certainly seems to think she will find them of use.

Whatever she hopes it will gain her.

“For as long as I remember, Sidious has been envisioning a plot to destroy the Jedi.” Maul idly scratches at the bottom of his jaw. “Under his tutelage, almost always, I was kept out of the loop—regarding the details of most things he did, really.”

Tano sets aside the wrapper of the bar she’s long been finished with and picks up another. “He didn’t trust you?”

Perhaps he should feel a stab at his pride with such an assumption, but he merely finds himself tilting his head back against the seat in contemplation. 

“He...” he sucks at his teeth. “Trust is not... universally applicable. He confided in me. He told me what I needed to know to be of assistance to him. But he did so cautiously.

“I do not know if it’s even possible for him to truly ‘trust’ anyone other than himself. If he is even capable of it.”

And why would he be? Trust—true trust, at the basest sense of the word—is the definition of vulnerability.

“Perhaps, for a while, he himself did not know what his plan entailed. Be it my guess, it took him decades to bring all this to fruition. He has worked his entire life to get to this point, of course.” Maul gives a slight scoff. “Truth be told, I’d say there’s no real reason to be upset about this. It was inevitable. You were beaten by the greatest mind in the Galaxy. There is no shame in that.”

When the silence stretches on for a few moments he realizes the stare of frigid incredulity on Tano’s face, hand with the protein bar frozen in midair.

“Force.” She pulls her lips back in a grimace. “Do you hear yourself?”

Maul spreads his hands. “I am stating facts, my lady.”

“Facts,” she mocks. “Bent and twisted. It’s all a game of dejarik to you, eh?” She tugs the wrapper back up over the bar and tosses the thing back on the table. “Do you ever feel— forget compassion, do you even feel _anything?_ You were on his side for so long, you worked with him towards all this. You’ve fought Jedi yourself, since your return. Shouldn’t their end make you proud? Relieved?” She cringes with visible disgust as she thinks up other relevant adjectives. “Content? Satisfied?”

_Satisfied._

Once, the destruction would have gratified him. Validated him and all he has done. But he was young, and he was a fool, and he didn’t see past whatever was directly in front of him.

Because that is how he was taught.

Limited.

Constrained.

What has he been fighting for? _Peace in the Galaxy,_ his Master has told him, but he rather thinks neither of them truly took the words for what they were. To Sidious they were a means to keep his pupil loyal, to Maul they were a promise of something greater. Something greater of which there was no true evidence, something he had to keep himself convinced of. 

But when the Jedi were to be finished, when the Galaxy was to be in heaps at his feet, what would be left? He wouldn’t be satisfied, so what would there be left to fight? 

Sidious, naturally, but what next? The climb is all there is, but how does one go on climbing when the ladder has ended?

His teachings were limited, perhaps he has always known it. But not for Sidious’s “mistrust.” Not for Sidious’s fear of his true potential. Not for Sidious’s fear that his apprentice might prematurely surpass him. 

No, his Master was merely afraid that Maul would see that beyond all their efforts, beyond all their foes and all their control, there was nothing. Nothing, truly, waiting at the end of the line.

“That is...” Maul drags out, “a complicated question.”

 _“Complicated,”_ Tano spits. “Oh, no, it doesn’t get any simpler than this. Does genocide make you happy, yes or no?”

For a moment, Maul simply stares.

What a gross oversimplification. It’s almost insulting.

“Come now, my lady, you aren’t being exactly fair.”

Now she huffs out a laugh. “What is there to discuss? It’s a simple question of ethics.”

“It is biased.”

“And you aren’t?”

Maul looses a chuckle in turn. “Fine, fine. You have a point.”

At once, Tano’s weary face glints with pride. It’s a fascinating sight.

“No,” he finally responds to her query. “No, it does not make me _happy.”_

“Then what does it make you?”

Of course she would not be content with the answer—of course she doesn’t think the question simple after all.

“What does? Genocide in general, as a concept in itself? Or specifically this one against the Jedi?”

Tano frowns. “This—” she begins to blink rapidly, “or—both— wait, what are you even trying to debate?”

Laughter barrels out of Maul’s chest. “You tell me, Lady Tano. Why are we talking about this?”

“What do you mean, ‘genocide in general,’ have you been committing actual genocides, too—?”

“That is not what I said, now, is it?”

“Then stop trying to confuse me and answer the damn question.”

Maul reaches out with his hand towards the chair next to the bed, and in the next instant the half-empty water bottle flies into his grip. “I rather think it’s you who’s confusing you.”

Tano follows the bottle’s movement with her eyes, then folds her arms on her chest and tilts her head, brows high and eyes wide in something of incredulous amusement.

Maul holds her stare as he opens the thing and briefly, in not much more than negligent formality, wipes the side of his hand over the neck. “Don’t fret, I’ll pay for half.”

“You better,” she scoffs. “Just one-seventy-five from me, now.”

“Yes, yes.” He takes a couple of leisurely gulps and then puts the cap back on.

“So?” Tano presses. “What does all of this mean to you?”

Maul guides the bottle to float back across the room—though not directly towards the bed, this time—and, when it’s right in front of her, Tano raises a hand to let it levitate at her fingertips and then lowers it gently to the table.

“Tell me,” Maul says, “why does it interest you so?”

“Dodging questions again?” She crosses her arms once more, and then rolls a shoulder. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just wondering how you think.”

“Hmm.”

_My girl._

_Inside my mind is the last place you want to be._

“Why?”

Tano shrugs again, like it’s obvious and she doesn’t know how to begin to explain. “Isn’t that natural? I’d just... I’d rather know, if I’m to work with y—”

She cuts herself abruptly short, lips still parted in the shape of the unsaid word. She stares at him for only a second before getting ahold of herself and hurrying to dart her eyes away.

But the damage has been done, and Maul’s brows creep slightly upward when he comes out of his couple-moments-long startlement.

Tano makes a great effort to look anywhere but at him. She turns to grab her opened protein bar again, takes a great deal of interest in re-unwrapping it.

There’s a tugging at Maul’s lips he can’t quite contain. And he cannot, he simply cannot pass up the opportunity to prod.

Tano clears her throat. “What I meant was—”

“No longer leaving, then, hm?”

As she presses her lips tighter together, her cheeks darken. It’s strangely satisfying to watch.

 _“What I meant was,”_ she grits out again, “you know the city. It’s huge. It’d be plain foolish to try to figure everything out by myself on unfamiliar turf, especially with so many clones out and about.”

Her eyes flick to him but then pull away again as she takes a bite.

“With that I’m going to have to agree,” says Maul.

Tano hums and then finishes chewing. “Yeah! So, there.”

Maul lowers his chin onto his hand, elbow propped up on an armrest.

Growing visibly discomfited under the scrutiny, she darts her eyes back to him a few times. “What?”

He holds the stare for a moment longer. “What changed your mind?”

Tano gives a jerky shrug. “Necessity?”

“Oh?”

“Listen—”

“I’m only just wondering how you think.”

The laugh she gives is harsh and awkward and doesn’t save her composure. “Okay. I see how it is.”

Ah—so when the cheeks are considerably darkened already, the blush spreads to the tips of the montrals. 

Lovely.

“You know what, fine.” Tano quickly wolfs down the rest of the bar. “Forget it. I won’t pry into your business and you won’t pry into mine, and we’ll just...” She stares into nothing and shrugs. “Not talk, I guess. That’s fine.”

Well, that’s certainly an option.

An option of unnecessary theatrics, that is.

“Tano.” Maul sighs and leans forward to clasp his hands together, elbows perched on his knees.

It seems she doesn’t know what she’s after.

“I can’t offer you my sympathies. It would sound false and insincere and we both know you would not accept it. Let’s just be perfectly honest with ourselves here.

“You’re right—I’ve stood against Jedi for most of my life, and albeit they weren’t my main focus since my... return, there is still the blood of many on my hands. I don’t need to deny it or even confess to it, you know all this yourself.”

She must not have known many or even any of them, or else there would be none of that wary inquisitiveness in the depth of her eyes.

No, no, he has not killed anyone personally dear to her. He knows the look—the whole range of it. Hers isn’t it. 

Hers is a look of halfway invested but detached observer. 

There is an undeniable streak of hypocrisy in her; a bend in ideology, or perhaps just youthful ignorance. Something to have birthed that eager alliance with one band of war criminals in efforts of stopping another, simply for the Republic’s preferred benefit. A self-serving choice between two evils, if one might stoop to clichés.

He wonders then, how versed she is in the nuances of Mandalorian politics. Perhaps, out of pure curiosity, he might ask her one day.

“All I can say that might be even remotely of use to you,” he goes on, “is that I no longer agree with anything that Sidious does. Inherently. Unconditionally. He is bound to only ever destroy, and one day he will destroy all he himself has built. It will be his undoing.”

Such words hold little meaning. He doesn’t believe it. There is nothing telling him that something like that might someday be true in any capacity whatsoever. 

But, really, he doesn’t much care.

Tano takes a moment to mull everything over, or maybe deal with whatever’s going on in that head of hers. When she arrives at—something, she gives a small nod to herself.

“And what _do_ you agree with?”

The question gives Maul pause while he considers and chooses his words.

Although, there is not much to think on. It’s really awfully simple, and so is the answer he gives her.

“Survival.”

Simple, but he doesn’t suppose Tano understands—he can’t expect her to. So, he adds on: “Times like these, that is imperative.”

That seems to put it into more comprehensible terms for her situation.

“You and me both, I guess,” she mutters after a moment.

He rather thinks neither of them truly takes the words for what they are.

“Certainly,” he says.

*

They talk more, she asks him other things. More practical, logistical things. She shares the extent of her knowledge on the notoriously nebulous commissioning of clones and he brings up what he’s heard from the Pykes about their involvement with Dooku a long time ago.

...Twelve years, to be precise.

No coincidences there. Sidious has told Maul nothing about a potential clone army, and when he was no longer in action...

(He has wondered, many times, whether Sidious has sensed him after his fall. Whether he has felt the dull spark of pleading life and has chosen to ignore it, or if he was met with silence upon reaching out. He does not know still. The answer varies, rocks like a pendulum, changes to suit whichever frame of mind chooses to cradle it.

(Perhaps this confusion is partly of his own making. Perhaps he enforced it himself while still caught in the webs of his own failure and shame and self-pity; one moment desperately calling out to his Master through the Force, and withdrawing and hiding in fear of facing the consequences of irreparable disappointment in the next.

(He didn’t need to hide very far. The nearly nonexistent thread of life he’d been hanging on did all the work for him.)

As soon as he was no longer in action Sidious was quick to draw Dooku in, for assistance of putting everything into motion. 

And now, evidently, the fool has outlived his usefulness. No coincidences there, as well. 

New apprentices are everywhere aplenty these days, it seems.

_Who did you snatch this time, old man?_

_Why now?_

One set of hands to divert the Republic’s attention to fortify the political sway. Another to help secure and execute the plot against the Jedi. The third to...

Something is brewing. Something neither he nor the old Count were ever made aware of.

“...but how did he manage it? He couldn’t have just... manipulated the entire army without a hitch. He’s just one man. The troopers are by the millions.”

Maul raises his eyes to Tano’s face as her words pull him back into the conversation. She’s taken to pacing, in the span of the last quarter of an hour having changed post from her place at the table to the bed and then back again. She stares at the floor in intent concentration, hand at her jaw, rubbing and scratching the skin with abandon of thought.

There is no reason to mull this over. The attack has already been carried out and attempting to uncover its details is more or less pointless; there is little useful insight to be gained here.

Still, Maul watches her coolly from his seat and lets her divert her thoughts as she pleases.

“You still think of them as people,” he points out.

It seems, by this point, Tano has exhausted her stores of indignation. Her voice grows simply tense and cold, she doesn’t bristle beyond that.

“That’s what they are,” she says.

“Biologically, perhaps.”

She rubs her eyes.

“We are all just sacks of organic matter, and that is but a building material that is no different in its function from, say, droid durasteel.”

“But of course, free will is the one thing that separates sapients from machines,” Tano drones out in a dull tone of textbook parody. “Don't worry, I took intro to philosophy."

“Then you know everything perfectly well yourself.”

“That doesn’t mean a kark,” she objects. “Our men had free will, I promise you. I don’t expect you to know, you haven’t worked with them. You haven’t _lived_ with them. For once, maybe you could take my word for it rather than trying to pretend you know everything, hm? How does that sound?”

Maul draws out a brief hum. “That is not my intention. I am merely urging you to think critically. You said it yourself—just how likely is one man to make millions of individuals carry out his orders by a snap of his fingers?”

Tano works her jaw.

“Millions that, as you say, have had years to build connections with their Jedi associates and may thus be unlikely to cooperate in their killing without question.”

“So you do admit to them having free will.”

“Only to an extent, perhaps. I cannot speak to the genuineness of their intentions, but—”

Frigid words cut him off. “You can stop right there.”

A curt chuckle rocks through Maul’s throat. “I understand that this is a sensitive subject for you, but, please, try to take a more objective stance.”

Tano’s sigh is incredibly heavy—not in annoyance or petty show of defiance, but, rather, genuine exhaustion. She rubs her eyes and temples again, and Maul guesses that she must still be struggling with her lingering headache.

He supposes all the recent events have been taking their toll. She all but aged two years in two days.

“No, no,” she shakes her head, “they couldn’t possibly have all been double agents. That’s just statistically improbable. That’s way too much time and too many people to keep one secret, it was bound to slip up at some point.”

“You must keep in mind that these men weren’t born, weren’t gathered from different points in the Galaxy and brought together under one banner,” Maul says. “No, these men were manufactured. In one place. Bred, like cattle. Engineered, like machines.”

The expression on Tano’s face is far from favorable, but, for now, she listens and doesn’t jump to objections.

“Tell me, how much control over the cloning facilities did the Jedi have?”

She holds a pause for a few beats. “What are you implying?”

“It is merely a theory, but I just can’t imagine this happening in much of any other way. Some sort of indoctrination, or—influencing, if you will, must have taken place during the troopers’ development stages.”

“Like what? How?”

“I do not know. But it must have been effective.”

One cannot expect Sidious’s schemes to be anything but.

“Surely not everybody took part in the shooting,” Tano says.

Maul hums. “Yes, in a perfect world, they would have that choice. But, I’m afraid that under Sidious’s command, defying orders is not an option one can reasonably take.”

“Okay.” Tano rubs her jaw again as she takes a breath and tries to look for a response on the floor. “Look. I’m sure Sidious is a frightening man, I’m not disputing that, but let’s just— let’s just think logically for a second here. Try to put yourself in their shoes.”

Something ticks in the back of Maul’s throat. Tightens.

“I had friends in those ranks. I’d call some of them brothers. Trust me when I say those connections were genuine—and mutual. I can say the same for some of other Jedi I knew, as well.”

No. There is no point to this.

There is nothing to be gained from talking about this. 

“So imagine—”

“Tano.” His voice is dry and quiet but she hears and stops mid-sentence to let him speak. “I know what you’re getting at. But my point stands.”

“No, just—” she purses her lips momentarily and sits down on the edge of the table. “Just listen for a second. Imagine yourself in some... group. You live with this group. You get to know them, you find likeminded people, you grow close, you make friends. You build bonds over years. It’s the strongest sense of camaraderie you could imagine. This group is your life.”

Dull alarms ring in the back of his mind, but, for some reason, Maul isn’t cutting her off.

As he steels himself for the punchline, he can’t help but give an inward scoff at the irony.

“Now imagine someone comes along and suddenly tells you to literally kill these people you’ve grown so close with.”

It’s funny.

Almost poetic. The old man surely appreciates the sick beauty of it all.

“Would you do it?”

Maul closes his eyes. Opens them. 

“Wait,” Tano hurries to add, “I know what you’re gonna say. Let me rephrase. The circumstances could be anything. They could be as complex as you like, they could be completely out of your control. You might have been brainwashed, or you yourself might be threatened, who knows. But, just, imagine being hit with such an order completely out of nowhere. Just how probable is it that you’d just nod and go off, right then, without question or a blink of an eye, and flat-out try to kill someone you care about? Just like that, by a flip of a switch, would you really do it?”

It should be an easy answer to give.

In a perfect world, it would be.

Maul draws out a slow breath. His words are slow as well. “I would not want to.”

Tano claps herself lightly on the knees in a show of having made a point. “There. Exactly. And now imagine millions of people being given that same order. Granted, not every trooper could call a Jedi a friend, I’m sure, but it wasn’t uncommon. Most of the time, there was respect. A sense of familiarity, at the very least. That counts for something.

“I just cannot reasonably imagine every single one of those millions of troopers being on board with having to gun down their generals. That’s just plain unrealistic.”

There is nothing to be gained from this. 

And there is no point in trying to make her see this differently. To someone like Tano, it is simply unthinkable. Through no fault of their own, they all are but victims of circumstance.

He could despise her for her circumstances.

“Sure,” says Maul, tight-jawed and wishing for a swift change of topic. “Sure. I suppose.”

“Yeah.” She nods slightly to herself. “And as such, I just don’t know—”

“What exactly do you hope to gain here, Tano?” he snaps his eyes to hers, words scratchy in his throat and just a tad too sharp. The interruption is almost a surprise to his own self. “What do you think you’ll achieve?”

Addled, she frowns. “Huh?”

He feels foolish for acting out like this. He feels pathetic.

He is doing nothing to stop himself.

“Let it go. It already happened.”

“I—”

“This is useless and a waste of time.”

The response is indignant, and justly so: “I’m trying to decide if it’s possible to still reach anyone!”

“You are merely reopening your wounds.”

For a while, silence. He holds her stare for an instant that seems entirely too long and then breaks it, but she’s still looking at him in wordless seeking of understanding and he hates that he so acutely feels her gaze.

There are not many things to occupy himself with in the meantime. He reaches over to the datapad next to him, brings it out of sleep mode, checks the time.

“You know what?” after a long moment, Tano speaks, and she sounds surprisingly calm. Almost coldly so. “We’ll put a pin in that.”

Maul does not respond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi maul’s psyche is fucked up how are you doing 🤝 
> 
> Context for anyone who hasn’t read The Wrath of Darth Maul: in the book Maul spends five years at an academy on Orsis that trains assassins, spies, soldiers and the like. When Maul is fifteen he accidentally reveals himself as Force-sensitive to an instructor, who then sells him out to Mother Talzin and helps her to try and bring Maul back to Dathomir. Following the resulting skirmish and Talzin’s retreat, Sidious orders Maul to kill everyone at the academy to avoid the spread of information. Maul does just that; among those he kills are his friends and the headmaster who, in the absence of any care and respect from Sidious, was seen as something of a father figure.
> 
> In this chapter, there's a reason for not naming or acknowledging the massacre outright.
> 
> And yes I did indeed shamelessly and blatantly steal a word-for-word line from dishonored, why do you ask? I do what I want mom
> 
> ***
> 
> Ahsoka: you’ve committed genocides???  
> Maul: I didn’t say that  
> Narrator: he has, in fact, committed genocides


	9. Chapter 9

When Tano’s gotten more of her much-needed sleep and they head out into the city the next day, first thing he does to put her mind at ease in respect to collecting digital receipts is buy a holopad.

One small argument later, resulting in a decision that she should be keeping track of her accumulating debt herself, he gets one for her as well.

“Be careful not to let the numbers out of control,” he chuckles, “or you’ll be stuck with me a long time.”

“Don’t you worry,” she shoots back with a sarcastic saccharine smile as she types the figures into her shiny new holo. “You’ll get your money.”

“Hm. May I ask how you’re planning on acquiring it?”

After all, this might very well work in his favor. Or—theirs, even. Their mutual favor.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says, more insistent. Then, quieter, under her breath: “I’ll figure it out.”

Maul smiles. “I have no doubt. I _am_ slightly concerned about the time frame, however.”

Tano pulls her eyes away from the screen to shoot him a sidelong look. “You got somewhere to be?”

“That depends. But, of course, I would prefer not to be stuck here indefinitely.”

“Nobody said anything about indefiniteness. Just give me— just let me get my footing, alright?”

“To do what?”

Tano tightens her lips. “I said, I’ll figure it out.”

“Please, do walk me through your thought process. I’m very curious.”

“I’ll, uh... get a job.”

“Oh?”

“I... have technician experience. I’ve had good training.”

As all respectable self-sufficient individuals should. Maul hums out his approval.

“Then you must have impressive credentials.”

Tano purses her lips. Works her jaw.

Maul flicks up a brow in amusement. “Really? None?”

She swallows, clearly yearning for something to say, to fling back.

“Not even an ID?”

“You know full well why I don’t even have an ID,” she spits. “Not that it’d do me much good now.”

“Of course not. Rather the contrary.”

“That was implied.”

They walk in silence for a few minutes as Maul lets her simmer through the thoughts in her head. In the morning hours of a weekend, it’s easy enough to blend in with the crowds in the streets.

“I’d get a new chip,” Tano says all of a sudden. “There’s people who program illegal IDs. It can’t be hard to find somebody.”

Maul hums solemnly. “Sound thinking.”

“The same somebody would have no issue forging documents.”

“Indeed.” Maul wrings his lips in a pseudo-apologetic smile. “Though I’m afraid that there is one small problem.”

A tense, sarcastic laugh escapes her. “Obviously they don’t do it for free.”

 _“Obviously._ Where would you get the credits?”

“Mm, that’s a bit of a loop right there, isn’t it?” 

She’s looking up at him with a sort of pointed, snide accusation that makes him loose a small scoff.

“We got ‘lucky’ on Erysthes; mind control resistance is rare,” Tano challenges in a lowered voice. “It’s always an option.”

“You would risk exposure in a highly surveilled area for something as trivial as programming services?”

“I wouldn’t _risk exposure_ if I were discreet like any rational person with a head on their shoulders.”

There’s that defensive stance.

“Alright,” Maul decides to concede. “Say risk isn’t an issue. Where would you find this individual?”

“That’s just details, of course I couldn’t tell you right off the top of my head.”

Sure, perhaps she could snoop around, eventually find a contact on her own—only, how long would it take?

“Alright,” says Maul, “clearly you have all of this under control.”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

“Will you at least allow me to provide sustenance while you work out your plans?”

Tano clicks her tongue, though it rings of exasperated amusement. “Well, I don’t have much of a choice there, now, do I?”

“You absolutely do. I thought you said you don’t want my money.”

She scoffs. “You just love to play semantics, don’t you? Not wanting your money is precisely the reason why I’ll be paying you back. Therefore, you’re not even giving it to me—you’re lending it.”

Thoroughly entertained, Maul hums. “Whatever keeps your pride intact.”

Tano rolls her eyes, but, to her credit, does not deign to respond.

Choosing battles. She’s learning.

Later, he ends up _lending_ her more credits—and thus she’s discarded her grimy gear of the Mandalorians and now sports an ensemble of maroon-dyed denym jumpsuit, brown leather jacket, and soft leather boots.

Maul makes do with a pair of pants made of sturdier fabric and a jacket of his own. A pair of gloves, too. Then, to top it all off—some spare tunics and shirts and two rucksacks for them both.

It’s good to be wearing clean comfortable clothes for once, there’s nothing to dispute there. It makes him feel more like a functional being and less like a... half-mechanized heathen.

Tano appreciates the change profusely and her mood is immensely brighter for it. As soon as they’re granted discretion she rolls up her poncho and tucks it into her pack, along with her lightsabers.

“Careful,” Maul quips, “with metal detectors.”

She only shoots him a glance but says nothing.

*

It seems finances become the main subject of their discussions these couple of days. Maul doesn’t mind. It’s entertaining. It takes his mind off things.

Of course, it’s also bound to prove useful, but he thinks that’s a given. It’s just a matter of time.

“...And anyway,” Tano jabs a counterattack to his ever-present arguments, “don’t just look at me, you’ll need a source of income too. Sooner or later, that shiny case of credits of yours is gonna empty out. What are you gonna do then?”

“You are absolutely correct, I’m in the same exact position. But you must agree that this starting amount allows me the benefit of time to calmly plan out my next steps.”

“Heh. ‘Starting amount.’” For a time, she’s quiet, and then—“Enough for all your necessary forgeries, you think?”

Maul holds out a weighty pause, as if he’s crunching the numbers.

“…And a ship?”

“Hmm. Perhaps. Depending on where you buy.” He works his jaw and then adds quietly, almost under his breath, as if muttering to himself, “Though it might be a very tight call, there won’t be much excess...”

There’s silence for a long while.

“When you traded your things in that night,” Tano speaks up later. “What was the contact? Black market?”

Maul nods.

“Can I… ask how much you got? Just for a frame of reference.”

He does not miss a beat. “Around fifty thousand.”

Tano raises her brows and continues staring off into the middle distance, absently chewing on the inside of her cheek. 

Thinking.

“Bled kybers go for a bit more, however,” Maul assures.

“And the living ones?”

 _Living._ He could correct her, had he cared enough. Tell her how a crystal is merely a tool, a shell, a capsule for the greater power held within it—and not something that, in itself, one can call a living being.

It’s no wonder she finds it so hard to let go. She insists on living with ghosts. Thinks them up and seeks them out all around herself, unable to walk freely for fear of stepping on one.

“Likely, about thirty apiece.”

He could bleed them for her. He could make them yield more.

But she would not want it. And never mind that it would help her. Never mind that a kyber does not care. Never mind that drawing blood is an act of cleansing.

Someday, she may see.

She falls back into thought and he wonders what’s going through her head. Perhaps, at last, she’s tapping into reason. Tallying up what she could own, once she lets go of sentimentality. Perhaps she’s imagining how easy it could be to pay off the debt that very quickly took off and now inches ever closer to a couple thousand credits. How quickly she could cut ties and reach full self-sufficiency, set herself on the path to smothering the powerlessness the attack has left her with. How easily she could let go of the objects carrying tangible pain, and lower her risk of exposure to boot. How she could benefit in more ways than one and get a head start.

Maul doesn’t ask her. He doesn’t voice any of this. He just lets her think.

*

They don’t speak of this for the remainder of the day.

The next morning in the motel, Tano is meditative and solemn.

“If I trade my sabers in,” she begins, quiet, but not meek. Her voice falls sure. “Will I be able to find my kybers later? Will I reach them through the Force?”

Huh, Maul thinks, her faith must be slipping if she’s earnestly asking him this.

He’s not one to play along with false notions. He’s not one to sugarcoat and leave others to drown in their delusions. Usually it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

Now, however, it isn’t. Tano needs the money. They need the money.

He could read her a detailed, comprehensive list of reasons why they need the money.

“Perhaps.” So, in favor of saving time, he personifies two chipped pieces of rock. “It is likely. If they are truly yours.”

If it gets her to make up her mind sooner rather than later.

Tano is quiet and narrow-eyed. “Are you just saying that, or do you mean it?”

Ah, perceptive. Cautious.

Good.

“Have I lied to you, my lady?” She does not speak. “There should be no need to ask me this. You should know the answer yourself, within.”

“You might just be telling me what I want to hear.”

“I should not need to tell you anything. Why are you asking? Are you unsure?”

For a few moments, Tano sits, and thinks.

“No,” she decides. “I’m not unsure.”

When she at last makes up her mind it isn’t a surprise, but it is welcome. 

“I’ll do it,” she says.

 _Wonderful,_ Maul doesn’t say. “Alright. Then I’ll take your things and will be back with the money shortly.”

Tano’s face contorts with incredulity. “What? No.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m going with you.”

 _Ah—_

In spite of himself, in an unsolicited flash of surprise, Maul stills. Really, he thinks, he should have expected her to demand this much. 

“There is no need,” he says, aiming for casual, neutral tone. “I will be back before you know it. It is a quick matter.”

“I don’t care.” Tano folds her arms on her chest. “I’m coming with you.”

“It really isn’t anything interesting.”

“These are my lightsabers! I don’t trust you with them! Is that so hard to understand? The trade goes through under my supervision or not all.”

Maul begins to realize that he doesn’t have much of an excuse with which to convince her to stay here.

It’s not an ideal situation. He does not need to dangle the Syndicate—his Syndicate—in front of a Jedi. In front of anyone, for that matter. He does not need to dangle the fact that he’s traveling with a Jedi in front of the Syndicate in the first place, and, were the information to fall on the wrong ears, make his bounty description even more specific than it already is.

But it’s fine. He’ll make do. The situation is not ideal, but it is also in no way unmanageable—as long as he still has men to confide in.

“Fine,” he finally says. “Then gather up.”

“We’re going? Now?”

“Yes. Unless you have somewhere to be?”

Tano flicks up a brow, but all the same scarfs down her leftovers from last night’s takeout, throws her things into her pack, and soon they set out.

On the way, she bombards him with questions. _Where exactly are we going? Is the dealer trustworthy? How can you be sure? Do they know who you are?_

She will soon see regardless; there’s no real harm, he figures, in telling her. So he does—somewhat. 

“It is an ally,” he merely informs her. “You have nothing to worry about.”

“As a civilian,” she nit-picks, “or as a Jedi?”

The concerns are well-founded, of course— _Well, generally speaking,_ he could say, _trusting a man of the underworld with your secrets isn’t the best of ideas._

_But, at my side, you don’t need to worry._

It’s the last thing he should be telling her—or that she wants to hear. So he doesn’t. And yet, in this case, it’s simply the truth.

*

Vakim’s store is busy at this hour. Customers loiter in the aisles and cluster at the front; idle chatter and a nearby assistant’s explanations about this or that brand of engine oil fill up the space with a mundane feeling of homeyness. The mute Twi’lek mans the register, communicating in hand signs with the occasional returning customer that’s proficient in the language, and otherwise typing rapid-fire messages on a keyboard connected to a small display monitor.

Tano looks around, shoots Maul an arched brow. In response he wanders over to the small section of fasteners, picks a cheap pack of hex bolts, and invites Tano to join him in line at the front.

The Twi’lek cashier takes notice; when her eyes slide briefly over Maul’s, her brow twitches. As his and Tano’s turn to pay comes along, it takes the woman a second to pull her lips into a warm smile, but she manages, albeit just a touch tense. Maul nods in greeting and smiles back, drops a couple lines of customary smalltalk and pays for the bolts. Before walking off, he nods ever so slightly towards the store’s service rooms.

For a brief moment the woman flicks her eyes in the same direction, shakes her head, and, with hesitance and a questioning look on her face, begins to reach for the keyboard.

Maul stops her hands gently with one of his own, and nods down at them.

She understands. She shakes her head, and signs in terse gestures: _Went out. Back around 1130._

Maul thanks her for her services, and he and Tano step away from the counter.

“What’d she say?” Tano asks under her breath when they move farther away. “Didn’t catch all of it.”

“You know signs?”

“Kind of. A little. But I’m rusty.”

“Well. We’ll need to wait a half an hour or so.”

So they do.

They loiter and meander through the store, or just stand around examining the various selections of components and tools and adhesives on shelves and stands. The sound of doors sliding open and closed persists all throughout as customers come and go, and it is indeed a half an hour later, perhaps a bit longer, when a tall figure turns a corner into their currently occupied aisle.

“Can I help you two find anything?”

Tano turns her head. Maul looks the same way and comes eye to eye with the store’s owner. 

Vakim is wearing a satchel over his shoulder and a customary friendly smile on his face, his gaze otherwise carefully blank. 

“Yes, actually,” Maul says. “You can.”

The other holds eye contact for only a moment before flicking his eyes to Tano and then back. Interpreting the motion as a request for confirmation, Maul gives him a nod.

Vakim blinks back, his subtle show of concealed acceptance. “Well, then,” he says, holding that same smile as he takes another look at Tano and then starts towards the back of the store. “Come along.”

He leads them through service and storage and all the way down to his workshop. He punches in the code on the lock’s keypad, then presses the pad of his thumb to the touchscreen, and the thick door comes alive with a sharp hiss. 

Once it slides fully open, he steps aside and ushers his guests in.

“Do come in,” he says, and flips two switches by the entrance. Several long ceiling lamps blink to life with a hum and spill their clinical white light into the space. “And, if you’ll excuse me, I only need a moment. Make yourselves at home, and I’ll be right back with you.”

The door shuts closed behind him, and the sound of his footsteps on the steel stairs spreads in dull echoes throughout the room.

Tano takes a moment to look around, folds her arms, and then starts in a slow circle along the cluttered perimeter. 

“So,” she drawls. Tilts her head to look closer at something on a shelf. Then shoots Maul a glance over her shoulder. “A Pyke.”

Maul leans with his shoulder against the wall on his side of the room, and also tilts his head in a sort of courteous nod. “As you can see.”

“And here I thought you were done with your gangs.”

He supposes it would make sense from an outside perspective. “Not entirely.”

She huffs. “What’s he doing here?”

“Running his store.”

“I mean on Etti IV.”

“And what is Black Sun doing in that bar?” Maul scoffs. “Business in CorpSec is good. A hotspot like this—you look hard enough, turn over enough rocks, you’ll find whole sectors teeming with mob representatives. All huddled up in their posts, playing at good neighbors.”

Tano gives a curt hum. Twists her lips. “You’d think it’d be more violent.”

“Well, they’re subtle. Careful. They’re playing nice. This isn’t their territory, CSA’s the one running the place. The gangs... I suppose you could see them as sorts of... tenants.

“But they play off of each other, of course. The CSA lets the gangs have a slice of the local market and trade routes, and looks the other way—as long as the operations are kept on the downlow and a good chunk of the profits made here is paid in tax.”

“How good a chunk?”

Maul thinks. “Last I heard, nearly thirty percent.”

“Hooh.” Tano breathes out a brusque laugh. “Not too profitable, is it?”

“Why, it is.” He casually rolls a shoulder. “It’s an investment. The market is plentiful, demand is high. Besides—by the time the spice, for instance, reaches these parts, its price goes up a good four or five times.”

Tano hums to herself again. “And the gangs haven’t even been trying to seize control of the area, is that what you’re saying?”

Maul spreads his hands in a gesture of _it is how it is._ “Enemy turf. They’re far from home. The CSA’s got numbers and muscle here.”

Which is why staying in this place for a prolonged amount of time is not an option. Where the corporation goes, go the former Separatists, and so does the new Emperor.

Too many eyes and ears around here.

A couple of minutes later, at last, Vakim once more makes his entrance.

“Alright,” he claps his hands together and bares his fangs in a wide smile. “Terribly sorry about the wait. So! To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Peeling his eyes off Tano’s form, he focuses them on Maul instead and knowingly lifts a brow.

“We find ourselves in need of your services,” says Maul.

“So I figured.” Vakim crosses the room over to the back, takes his satchel off his shoulder and deposits it on the floor in the corner. He then comes to the table in the center and once again fixes Tano with twinkling eyes. “And who is this lovely young lady you’ve brought to me, my lord?”

“A _guest,”_ Maul is quick to proclaim before Vakim grasps the wrong notion and sets off to prepare a shipping crate for new merchandise. “An associate. Safe to trust.” 

As long as he keeps her around and doesn’t let her slip away with whatever intel this meeting gains her, that is.

“Hoh.” Vakim masks the subtle puff of surprise that escapes him with an affront of amusement. “Well, then. In that case—” He bows his head towards Tano and accompanies the motion with a small hand gesture of civility. “Vakim Nosh of the Pyke Family, at your service.”

She does not return the courtesy. “You know Maul—from all the way out here.”

“Oh, yes, I do indeed. Might even go as far as to call myself one of the lucky few with the privilege—if my lord will forgive me my audacity.”

From his spot by the wall, Maul only quirks up a corner of his lips in response.

“Privilege.” Tano crosses her arms. “Which is?”

Vakim studies her a moment, then flicks his eyes over to Maul and back again, his brow slowly rising. “Why, it’s a great honor to be on rather... agreeable terms with the main instigator and patron of the Family’s most profitable partnership in the past few years, if not decade. I assume there’s no need to list off the successes of Lord Maul’s abetment—”

“No, actually, there is,” Tano quickly jumps back in, her tone a delicate balance between politeness and sardonicism. “Please do.”

“My lord,” Vakim’s lips stretch in a grin, though his gaze stays where it is. “What a peculiar guest you’ve got.”

Before Maul can open his mouth to reply, Tano exclaims, “I’m... new. Obviously I missed a lot. Do enlighten me, mister Nosh— _Lord Maul_ is quite humble and does not speak of his exploits much.”

Vakim looses a delighted little laugh. “I know what you mean.” At this point Maul makes no attempt to intervene in the rapid exchange and just sighs to himself instead, giving a small shrug in response to yet another amused glance in his direction. “Please, just call me Vakim. Formality doesn’t suit me. And— I’m sorry, I must not have caught your name.”

“I didn’t give it yet,” Tano counters, and then holds a pause that lasts just a second too long. “But it’s Ashla. Ashla Ti.”

Another short pause rolls through the room. Maul does not miss the subtle narrowing of Vakim’s eyes.

The man retains his hostly smile as he slightly, very carefully, tilts his head forward. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, miss Ashla.”

His eyes do not leave her face, like she’s a showpiece in an exhibit and he the ever analyzing critic. Maul catches a slight roll of Tano’s shoulder that betrays discomfort, but she remains otherwise unperturbed.

In the next moment, Vakim comes alive and snaps his fingers as he indulges a new thought. “Ah, I’m afraid it’s much too early for spirits, but would either of you care for some cold Deychin tea? I just happen to have a batch brewed.”

Vakim is a man in need of reaction and participation when it comes to his generous hospitality, and there is no harm in humoring him when said hospitality doesn’t involve excesses of credits. So Maul agrees to the tea for courtesy’s sake—as well as to indirectly assure Tano that she will not find herself poisoned here.

At least, not on his watch.

“Swell,” Vakim chirps and turns to Tano. “And for the lady?”

She doesn’t get enough time to decide, however; Vakim leaves his own question hanging and quickly retreats into the closed-off room in the back, raising his voice so that he can be heard from the main space.

“If you must know—very well, I suppose the beginning is a good place to start,” his voice rings out. Sounds of activity fill up a short pause that follows. “We didn’t know who Lord Maul was when he appeared on our radars, but he immediately made an impression. So we came to him. We saw opportunity. And oh did we get it.” He soon comes back out with a pitcher in one hand and a stack of three empty cups in the other—a mercy and a courtesy of transparency, to quell Tano’s palpable suspicion of the offered refreshment. “Our Imperator was seeking to expand, you see.” He sets out the cups in a row and fills all three, then sets two on the edge of the table opposite of himself and gestures to the one intended for Tano. “Please, do have a taste. Only the best blends in our stashes.”

Maul comes up to the table to take his own with a silent nod of gratitude, and stands back to slowly sip and observe. Tano watches him for a moment out of the corner of her eye, then eyes the cup before her, and picks it up only when Vakim takes a casual drink from his own. He, too, throws Maul another look, now questioning; Maul nods, allowing the go-ahead on relaying of information. 

So he continues. “Some of our... neighbors were making expansion a bit more difficult than it needed to be. Black Sun were among them. So, when we heard that our dearest Suns joined forces with a mysterious Force-wielding figure—not to mention the abrupt dissolution of their council—we naturally had to see what was going on.

“Lord Maul and Death Watch had a plan, I… assume you’ve heard of it.” Tano scoffs silently and nods. “Our forces seemed to be a welcome addition to the fray. This is when we finally established a loose foundation for trade and better communication with the Black Sun—their new leader proved more agreeable than the last bunch. We were promised in advance that we would be free to set up control points in the systems of Mandalore when the planet was taken—but, and here I’m meaning no offense, my lord,” Vakim nods towards Maul, “those were just promises.” He fixes Tano with his gaze again and points briefly at Maul, “And this man understood that. He respected our demand for more. And he went out of his way to give it. But,” here he raises a finger to punctuate a dramatic pause, “it was not money he gave us.”

He takes a moment to drink out of his cup and lightly smacks his lips. “Money is a fleeting thing. Fickle. It comes and goes. What’s the saying, give a man a fish, teach a man to fish...” 

Tano huffs once more and also sips on her tea.

“Lord Maul gave us solutions. Investments. Longterm changes.” Vakim props his arms on the table’s edge. “He collaborated with our leader, he listened to our aspirations, and then took his... partner, and in just a few fell swoops the two of them personally helped us secure many new trade points that otherwise would have cost us months, men, and way too much resources to justifiably call the endeavor worthwhile. With Lord Maul’s help it ended up being just that.

“So, miss Ashla. With all that said, to circle back to your query—yes, I do indeed know our most esteemed benefactor, and I consider it my highest honor. I hope that answers your question.”

Tano stands still for a moment, chewing on her cheek. 

“It does,” she finally says, “thank you. But, ah, you mentioned the start of an alliance with the Black Sun as one of the benefits of joining with Maul.”

“It absolutely was.”

“And just how _longterm_ of an alliance was that?” Tano crosses her arms halfway as she still holds the cup of tea at her lips, and turns to Maul. “You,” she tilts her head, “failed to hold them all in line. The group collapsed under your watch. Did it not?”

Maul tilts his head in turn, and narrows his eyes. Pressing on her with his silence.

Vakim gives a mirthless smirk and dispels the momentary quiet. “Oh, it did, it sure did. But I wouldn’t pin that on any one cause.” Tano turns back to him and he intently holds her gaze. “Quite a lot of things are collapsing nowadays, wouldn’t you agree?”

Her brow furrows. The silence stretches on.

A few long and, admittedly, not entirely comfortable moments later, Maul decides to finally move things along. “Delightful chat,” he deadpans. “Vakim, we’re here to trade.”

That makes Vakim snap his eyes to his face and beam a wide smile. “Right, right, of course. You know, I was wondering when to expect y—”

With a glare and a sharp jerk of his head, Maul cuts him short.

Vakim blinks, swallows, and shifts gears. He claps and rubs his hands. “So! What are we looking at?”

Tano shoots Maul a hesitant glance. 

Maul does nothing to ease her discomfort, only tilts his head in an indifferent sort of nod. 

_You chose to come here yourself and risk detection._

Ever so slightly, she tightens her lips and slowly pulls off her pack, then props it up on her knee as she digs around within it. 

“I, ah,” she begins and suddenly Vakim is back to studying her like a mysterious artifact, “want to trade these in.”

She pulls out the lightsabers one by one and lays them out on the table.

One moment, Vakim does not change in the face. 

In the next, he draws his head back and gives a prolonged hum.

“Ah. The fabled lightsabers,” he drawls, and once again brings his narrowed eyes to Tano’s face. “These are incredibly rare, miss Ashla. I’m eager to hear how you managed to get your hands on them.”

She shrugs, all nonchalance. “Picked them off a dead Jedi.”

Vakim’s smile grows slightly. “Yes, I suppose these days they’re a tad easier to come across… Tragic times for the Jedi, eh?” 

Another pause as he flicks his eyes between Tano and the weapons. He drags the tip of his tongue over the top row of his teeth. Rubs his chin, then runs a knuckle down one of his mandible tails. 

“Um…” he gives an unclear, toneless chuckle. “Would you excuse me for a second? I’m terribly sorry.”

He pushes away from the table and slips into his back room.

Tano turns to shoot Maul a glance. He wordlessly looks back, shrugs.

Vakim stays in the back for only about a minute before he comes back out with a holopad and a display disk in his hands. “My lord,” he calls, his voice ringing with loud amusement, “you wound me. Your companion is the very gal that made a fool of Krim, and you didn’t even tell me?”

Maul blinks, watching as Vakim tosses the disk on the table and presses something on his holopad. The disk brings up a still holographic image—of Tano, in simple civilian garb and no lightsabers in sight, and two human women behind her.

Eyes wide and glued to the hologram, Tano freezes. 

Maul stares.

Tano breaks the silence first. She clears her throat. “I—”

“Oh, oh, miss Ahsoka.” Vakim’s chuckles don a conspiratorial air. “Aren’t you a sneaky one. A word to the wise: next time you pick an alias, you might want to try a little harder.”

Maul turns to Tano, slowly, dragged through the thick sludge of disbelief. 

She looks back, eyes wide, and there’s not an ounce of anything he feels that’s not morbid fascination. “That was you.”

She flits her attention between him and Vakim, clearly not knowing whether to look apologetic or worried or defiant, and somehow managing a muddy mix of all three. “Uh…”

_“That was you.”_

Vakim also looks between the two of them. “Wait. You didn’t know?”

 _“No.”_ A chortle winds Maul’s voice down to a breathy rasp. “No, I did not.”

Tano gives a lopsided, hesitant half-smile of someone caught utterly off guard. “I... saw you there,” she mutters. “Well, your— a hologram of you. I overheard your holotransmission.”

Incredulous laughter crawls up his throat. “It was _you_ I sensed in that refinery—”

_You were a thorn in my side even before I learned of you?_

_Remarkable._

“If it makes you feel any better, it was technically an accident. You could say I was just passing by.”

Maul simply stares for a moment, scoffs, then looks at Vakim. The man in turn looks at them both, switching his eyes quickly from one to the other.

“What a pair, you two. Let this be the day you get to know each other better, then. I’m honored to be hosting this event.” He grins, looks back at Tano, and shakes his head. “So this is the Jedi that singlehandedly blew up a sector of the Palace’s refinery.”

Tano waits, looking at Vakim from under the brow, as if unsure of what to make of his reaction. “You’d think Marg Krim would have hushed it up.”

“Oh, he tried. But, my dear, word of things like this travels fast. And here I was wondering why you looked familiar…” He nods at the hologram, then tilts his head and narrows his eyes. “You didn’t really think an attack on my home would pass by me?”

She tenses. Firms up her jaw. 

“It had to be done,” she says.

“You know, we have no quarrel with the Jedi.” Vakim bends towards the table, propping himself on his elbows and clasping his hands together. “Not usually. We don’t bother them, they stay out of our lanes... With how good the business on Coruscant is, you’d think we’re in some mutually beneficial arrangement or something.”

“The war sent all Jedi to the front lines,” Tano grates, voice lowered. “So forgive us if we couldn’t keep a close eye on your little operation.”

“Ah, and so you left those front lines and instead decided to play vigilante where the Republic’s jurisdiction doesn’t reach. You raided a shipment and tailed it right to our doorstep.”

“I wasn’t there by choice. I was trying to escape—destruction of that scale may not have been necessary for that alone but I stand by what I did.”

“And I can respect that. We all play our part. Of course, I’d hate if someone I knew got caught in that blast, I couldn’t forgive you then...”

Tano frowns and lifts a brow. “...But you forgive me now?...”

“Of course.” Vakim spreads his hands slightly and grins. “With all this, you did a beautiful thing—you put a dent in Krim’s reputation. You humiliated him. You made him get told off by Lord Maul like a youngling and forced him to explain himself to half his own men.” He stands back up to full height and pours more tea for himself. “Any enemy of Krim’s—and a friend of Lord Maul’s, obviously—is a friend of mine.”

“Is that so?” When Vakim refills her portion, Tano takes her drink again. “What’s your gripe with Krim?”

“Ah… Let’s just say we have our differences.”

 _Simply put,_ Maul fills in for him in his thoughts, _Krim is simply not his predecessor._ Lom’s death was a blow to them all, in fact it might be the very root cause of such dramatic eventual splintering of the Collective. Succeeding Imperator Marg Krim proved a spineless, double-crossing cretin who took Maul’s imprisonment for an opportunity to begin backing out of the alliance he had no say or part in securing. As he gradually pulled his assets, Black Sun took him for example. Rook and Saxon and their men alone could not keep them on the leash, and Maul returned from imprisonment to a rickety, flimsy tower of scrap rather than a once-solid foundation. One could say that, from that point on, the following failures were somewhat expected.

And who is to blame for Lom’s demise? Who brought Dooku to the Pykes’ headquarters that day?

Dearest Kenobi.

But Maul and his commandos were not the only ones with whom Krim had a bone to pick. He cracked down on recent expansions of trade routes and pulled out of more deals, deeming the Pykes’ assets too thin to maintain it all at once. He cut and reallocated funds and labor, he downscaled on slave imports, he ran from conflict and competition—and thus disrespected everything his predecessor stood for, rocking the long-standing and thriving traditions.

Needless to say, supporters of the late Lom Pyke did not favor him much. The only smart decision Krim has made since his rise to power was keeping his guards and generals close.

“Still, I must say,” Vakim goes on, “I am most curious to hear how my lord came to be in the company of... a Jedi.”

His eyes are held exclusively for Tano, like this is a transgression only she can answer for. Maul ticks up a brow.

He wonders if she might see it fit to mention Mandalore. He would rather she didn’t.

Any surviving commandos under Saxon couldn’t have been too keen on sharing details of their defeat with anyone outside their own ranks. Word is quick to spread through the underworld, and on the off chance that it doesn’t—perhaps that’s an indication that it’s best to be kept that way.

To her credit, Tano errs on the side of caution. “We have a... common enemy.”

Now Vakim glances at Maul as if to seek confirmation, and when he’s met with agreeable silence, returns his attention to Tano.

“Yes,” he mutters, voice contemplative. “I imagine you do.”

She studies him, tips her head back, and does not give him anything else. He does not press further.

They move along and proceed with the exchange of contraband.

 _Are the credits clean?_ Tano asks when Vakim lays out stacks of chips on the table.

He chuckles, _Clean as a baby’s leg._

There is no joy in Tano’s movements, only sullen determination, when she takes the money and watches Vakim file her crystals and lightsaber frames away.

 _Do not worry,_ Maul would say had they been alone, and as the thought flies through his mind he finds he isn’t sure whether it’s meant as a jeer or genuine consolation. _You will not miss them for long._

They are, after all, only tools.

*

When the deal is over and done with and Vakim politely asks if Tano could give them a moment to speak in private, she throws a suspicious look at them both, but complies and heads back up into the store.

“Sharp, that one,” Vakim says when Maul turns to him with wordless query. “I am... surprised, and intrigued, but I suppose I can see how you’d take an interest in someone like her.”

Maul rolls a shoulder. “It is an arrangement of benefit. I see merit in it.”

A recitation, sharpened and polished to perfection in his mind.

He could take all her credits. He could have taken her weapons and sold them himself. He could discard her somewhere, or better yet, kill to ensure she could never set the Empire on his tracks—willingly or not. Potential or no, sharp and skilled as she may be, he doesn’t need this arrangement. He doesn’t need her.

Yet, although she will not say it plainly, she has nowhere to go. And he...

Well, frankly, he doesn’t either.

Vakim hums. “Ever the planner.”

Maul doesn’t take the bait. “What did you want to tell me?”

“Right. Right, yes— I, ah.” 

He fidgets, and suddenly whole layers of confidence melt away from his demeanor right before Maul’s eyes.

Maul patiently tilts his head. 

“A moment,” Vakim says and goes into his rooms in the back. He speaks from there, not bothering to wait. “Just—wanted to show you something. After your last visit, I dug around a bit, and...”

When he comes back out, he‘s holding something small in his hands.

“I just thought…” He cringes slightly, as if not sure how to proceed. “It’s not right, you know? It’s not right how Kryze’s men got to his body first. I know you two were close. I know what that’s like—you know that.”

The processes of Maul’s being screech to an abrupt halt.

He swallows; he tries to unwind the sudden strain in the muscles of his back, but cannot.

“You know how I like to keep things for sentimental value. So I just thought...” Vakim gingerly opens his palm. “I thought maybe you’d want to have this.”

A lurch gives somewhere under Maul’s breastbone as he stands and looks at an old discarded finger from Savage’s prosthetic hand.

He must have stood like this for an indecent amount of time, unmoving, unblinking, because when Vakim pulls him back to reality with a softly uttered _my lord?_ he gasps.

The air he gulps is leaden. He feels as if all his innards sag an inch.

He takes a step back.

“My lord—”

“Get rid of it.”

Vakim stares, brow creased with— Maul grinds his teeth and narrowly suppresses a growl. 

He does not need his karking pity.

“I said, get rid of it.”

“My lord, I—”

Maul shoots out his hand, and the crunch of crumpling metal masks and blankets the wretched hitch of his breath.

After, he flexes his fingers to try and banish this last bit of essence of him from the Force in his veins.

Vakim does not flinch, does not look at the small pile of crushed junk in his hand. He just looks... doleful. Alone.

Maul’s hand does not shake. He clenches a fist just in case. He moves closer, bends his head in to ensure his words reach the very ends of Vakim’s inner ear canals.

“Never,” he hisses, barely audible, _“never_ speak to me of him in this context again.”

Vakim slowly blinks, draws out a breath. Closes his eyes. Nods. Maul steps back and, for a moment, stares into nothing. The buzzing of the lamps on the ceiling rends his hearing.

“I’m going off-world,” he abruptly says as the other closes his fist and lowers his arm to his side. “Goodbye, Vakim.”

“My lord.” Vakim’s words are weak from the tightness of his jaw. “I’m sorry.”

Maul turns on his heel, and leaves.

*

Ahsoka leans against the wall, watching blankly as the customers trickle in and out, and does her best to think about anything other than the piece of her that she’s just torn off and given away. The weight of credits in her pack consoles her, somewhat. She did a reasonable thing. This is for the best.

Maul doesn’t take long, and soon shows.

His Force—balanced and perfectly normal a mere few minutes ago—is smothering and oppressive. Ahsoka tenses.

“Let’s go,” he says, his voice stiff and dry. 

Ahsoka wonders, but doesn’t ask. On the way back, he doesn’t say another word.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loved Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka so much I found motivation to polish up this chapter. If there’s anyone at all who still cares - I’m sorry for being so bad with updates for this fic 😔

If Maul had anything planned for them after their visit to his ally’s... base of operations, then those plans seem to quickly go down the drain.

Ahsoka doesn’t mind the mellow level of activity, and even appreciates the more or less free time to be able to brood for a bit in peace, what with the crushing weight of the absence of her most—only—prized possessions. Reason, however, finally seems to overshadow emotion, and she finds she doesn’t really want to spend any precious energy on said brooding.

Maul, however. Maul evidently has all the energy to spare.

“Moody” is really the only word Ahsoka can ascribe to the state he’s in. At first it even amuses her; it isn’t nearly the first time he’s slipped into dour moods out of nowhere and she’s quickly learned to think nothing of it. It’s simply the way he is—not surprising, really, with the kind of life he’s been leading. His issues are of no concern to her.

So she lets him be, as usual. They don’t speak when they get back to the motel and drop off some of their things, and then exchange only a couple of phrases in deciding where to get lunch before going back to silence on the way to the place and practically all through the meal.

Finished with the main course, Ahsoka lazily picks at a pastry roll as she sits and _observes_ —no other real way to call it—Maul in the seat across from her.

She thinks, she ought to revise her choice of word from before. Not moody or brooding, not really. Just... 

He’s... distracted.

Which is utterly strange. And there’s no usual familiar irritation rolling off him in waves, either. Nor is there a thin trickle of it in the air. There’s no aimless anger or bite. She isn’t sure if she can even sense any emotion from him at all.

That’s neither entirely pleasant nor comforting.

“So, where to now?” Ahsoka asks just for the sake of stirring conversation.

Maul pokes at his food and blinks at his plate.

“Um,” he drags out, and pauses before speaking. Frowns into nothing. “A ship would be in order. …And all that comes with it.”

“Makes sense. And then?”

He hums something vague under his breath, then takes a bite of his food. Wary, but patient, Ahsoka waits.

Finally, a few long moments later, he speaks in the exact same slow, aimless manner, “Then we’ll be able to gauge the amount of cargo that can be carried on board...”

He trails off. Ahsoka pops a piece of pastry into her mouth. “Well, yes, that’s implied, but I meant where you’re planning to ultimately take that ship.”

He neither replies nor otherwise reacts, but Ahsoka gets the impression that, rather than not knowing how to answer, he simply didn’t hear or process the question. She frowns, but something tells her she should let it be, for now. She doesn’t push.

*

For the remainder of the day, he’s effectively vacant. And while Ahsoka supposes she can appreciate a break from the sharp remarks of his pseudo-philosophical discourse, she thinks she doesn’t particularly care for this new side of him.

*

_Brother._

_Brother, we have to go._

_I cannot._

_Fine. Stay here._

_No. No, take me with you._

_Then come._

_I cannot walk. Help me up, brother. Will you help me up? Don’t leave me here. I cannot do it myself. You have to help me. Will you help me?_

_Brother._

_I killed him._

_You did their bidding._

_They made me._

_You obeyed._

_I wanted to. He was weak._

_So they told you._

_What are you saying?_

_I’m disappointed, apprentice. What kind of man kills his own kin?_

_He was—_

_He was my brother, too._

_You didn’t know him._

_But I could have. And now you’ve taken that from me. You denied me. And even worse—you_ obeyed. _Like a hound._

_You demand my obedience now; how is that different?_

_It is entirely different. They were not your people._

_But, Mother—_

_Mother Talzin loves you only as a possession. She has kept you under heel your whole life. She is not your people._ I _am your people. I will free you._

_Just as I freed you._

_Just as you freed me. We are one, you and I. We were always meant to be. And always will be._

_Always?_

_Yes._

_My son._

_Mother._

_Mother, he took him. Don’t leave me, not you too._

_You are broken, my son. Let us fix what has been broken._

_No. Not you too._

_Promise you’ll never_

_Maul?_ Tano calls, tries to bring his attention back to the discussion, but he doesn’t hear. Instead he pushes through the throngs of people towards a tall, bulky cloaked figure—he’s dead, he knows he’s dead, he held his body, and yet— what if—

It’s not Savage, though he sees how the particular silhouette formed by the man’s horns could fool him from a distance. Mess with his head like this. He supposes it’s about time he began seeing the dead in crowds.

But no, look—it _is_ Savage. In the flesh. Beaming down at Maul with that crooked grin of his, such a rare sight on his face, so _personal_ because it’s never addressed to anyone else. Only to his flesh and blood.

And once again, as if there was never anything to stop him from doing so, Maul swells with honor and pride.

But it all turns to ghastly terror as both of his brother’s large, healthy, natural flesh hands begin to crumble. His skin cracks and tears, his fingers bend and twist in unnatural directions and angles as if by an invisible force. Savage’s mouth opens in a beginning of a cry of pain or fear or both as he gapes at Maul in cold panic and begs him to make this right. 

Such big, glassy eyes.

 _Brother,_ he screams, or maybe mouthes with no sound, and Maul can’t possibly be quick enough to grip him by the wrists and take his crushed fingers in his hands and utterly fail to do anything to mend them back into place. Flesh turns to dust and sand, steel and iron spring up in its place like fresh blades of grass. Life falls away to make room for machinery, and it crawls further and further up Savage’s arms, now seizes his legs, and then swallows his core. Only his wide frightened eyes remain before they too harden into iron, and soon melt into pools of bright, sickly green. 

And Maul could rend his throat to shreds with his screaming alone. But no one hears him. Savage will never again hear him.

He falls. He’s falling for a long time. He’s plunged into volcanic heat and the needle punctures of his inkwork ooze pus and his skin bursts with bubbling welts, but he feels the pain only to the extent that is just bearable enough to retain consciousness.

When he lands at the bottom, when he’s slammed against the heated rock of the Mustafar grounds, when he chokes on the thick ashy air, he wishes he still remembered how to weep.

*

Maul wakes up shivering. His skin is clammy and the sweat rolling off him turns the sheets he’s laying on to ice. He’s so cold he thinks he even feels it in his _legs,_ an abrupt, quick ripple of a shudder from top to bottom of the lower body that he should, but does not, have.

That’s it. That’s all it is. It’s no surprise he’s coming apart at the seams, but this is precisely the reason why—it’s Kenobi. It is all, always, Kenobi and everything he’s done.

Maul stares at the ceiling through the dark, envisions his enemy’s face and attempts to center himself. Latch onto the idea of him. Grab hold of the hate and let it steady him.

In fact, he doesn’t need to be steadied. Because he’s fine.

After what must be minutes of lifeless staring at the ceiling, Maul realizes he’s trying to avoid closing his eyes.

He predicts that he won’t be able to sleep through the rest of the night. Why? he asks himself. 

No reason. It happens. He’s fine.

_Why this? Why now?_

He’s still cold. He shouldn’t be, the blood of his species runs hot. He turns onto his side, grabs hold of the sheet he’s thrown off in his sleep and pulls it around himself in a poor attempt at a cocoon. But it’s largely useless; his legs don’t quite fit in a position he wants, clunky and unwieldy, and he feels stupid for trying to curl up without possessing the very ability to do so. And the sheet is damp with sweat anyway. 

So instead he sits up, takes a minute at the edge of the bed to bring himself into focus, and, sliding a cursory glance over Tano’s sleeping form on the other side of the room, goes to the refresher. 

He passes the mirror quickly, making sure his eyes don’t drift over to it.

The water echoes as it hits the plasteel walls and floor of the shower stall, reverberates in a smooth pitter-patter stream all around the tiny refresher space. Maul focuses on the noise, lets it press on his ears, snake its way inside his head and curl there into dense mush. As he steps into the shower, he absently thinks that he has no idea what Vakim meant when he told him to stay away from water, or what the alternatives would be for lack of sonic showers in the vicinity. It’s not like his prostheses can be put on and off like a pair of pants.

Although, he thinks, he ought to be carefully washing what remains of his body with a cloth or something in that vein, but— too late, water is already trickling into his leg joints anyway. Frankly, he doesn’t give a kark. 

He isn’t sure how long he just stands there, squinting occasionally on reflex so that the water flows past his eyes, rather than directly into. And he’s still shivering, he realizes. He can see the steam, he can smell the thick dampness in the air—the water must already be scalding, but he barely registers it. 

He turns the heat up all the way.

The dream that’s woken him returns to him then, and he blankly, vacantly relives it, calmly and neutrally lets it play before his eyes like a dull holovid.

It’s easy to view it like this, through a thick lens of detachment. It’s easy to dismiss it as yet another share of psychedelic garbage. That’s nothing especially new, and it merely sparks mild irritation when the image of steel and bubbling green rolls through his mind for the second, and then third time in a row.

Savage, he reasons, was weak.

Not strong enough. Not fast enough. Not cunning enough. He made a series of foolish rookie mistakes in that fight and it cost him his life. It is the price he had to pay for failure. It is no one’s fault but his own.

No one’s. No one else’s.

He never got to see his body—after.

Death Watch got their hands on it, as his men have told him. He can picture all the different ways they must have mutilated it. Paraded it through the streets. Dragged his name through the mud. Stripped his lightsaber down for parts, sold the kybers, or maybe kept them as trophy necklace charms for their fire-headed leader.

He should have killed the schutta when he had the chance. Snapped her neck right then and there in that throne room, on the very same spot, just like her sister. He should have wiped out her men. He shouldn’t have wasted time waiting for his commandos to get him out of the Spire, should have tried harder and broken out on his own. Perhaps then he could have caught the old man off guard, pinned him down, wrapped his hands around that ancient brittle throat and flattened it clean against the floor.

He should have killed them all, he should have killed Vakim for bringing his brother up so carelessly like that, he should have just taken that damn finger—

He has nothing left of him.

The thought pierces, bludgeons, burns hotter than the water running over him ever could.

He has nothing left of Savage Opress.

But he shouldn’t need anything. He never had anything of him to begin with, so why should that change. He only ever had… him. For a fleeting moment at that, so ridiculously brief it seems a stray dream. It should be forgettable. It should be so insignificant. In the grand scheme of things, nothing like this ever matters. It was a distraction. It was a failure.

He never got to see his body, after. But he shouldn’t have needed to.

He didn’t think he would need to mourn anyone. He thought he’d made sure he wouldn’t ever need to mourn anyone else.

He thought a lot of things. In fact, he thinks so much, all he ever does is think, and it never pays off or allows him any clarity that he should deserve without question by now. He thought that all of this would be worth it. He thought that he would be rewarded for all his suffering. His dear old master took great care to get that into his head, didn’t he?

When he grows aware of the sounds escaping him, Maul can’t really tell whether he’s hissing from the painful heat of the water or beginning to shake in jerky fits of laughter, or else. When he thinks this, he starts laughing in earnest; low rumbling in his chest that turns into cackling, rattling and brittle.

So brittle. His throat is tight, so tense he feels it might crack into pieces. Its walls feel so thin. A dull ache itches in his gums and roots of his horns.

The water is unbearable and he’s certainly feeling it now, in the burning along his arms and chest, especially in the scar tissue that’s relatively fresh. Many scars, from many battles and many means, but, he thinks, _Master. It’s all you._

He moves sightly forward, bends his head so that the stream hits the decades-old burn on the base of his neck, right on top of the seventh vertebra—and perhaps it doesn’t hurt particularly bad in itself, but he imagines that it does. He imagines—remembers—the sensation of the slow melting of his skin under the plasma. A perfect horizontal trench. Even in its crudeness, clean and effective. A civilized mark from a civilized blade.

Many marks. And then more, on top of the old. All the needles, all the layers of ink pumped into the burned tissue to cover up the obvious damage.

He’s never really gotten used to needles.

It isn’t anything different, really. Pain is pain, no matter the tool. And yet, he thinks, the burnings were always the easy part. It were the hours after, restrained and held down, loomed over by droids with pincers and needles and outdated inefficient inking algorithms that spelled so much more dread.

Of course, his skin always healed correctly. That was always made sure of.

He’s never really gotten used to needles, but he almost wishes for them now, for those droids to appear and seize him and poke out his eyes because he realizes he’s still seeing that cursed dream.

He would really rather he didn’t.

But he thinks of Mother, of the weak, hoarse gagging that Grievous’s blades forced out of her. Like a mortal. Like she was never even anything more. He remembers himself being dragged away, kicking and howling, and he thinks that might be the only time in his life that he gave in to hysterics and cried out for the dead.

The one time he actually tried to save someone, made a conscious effort to protect, he couldn’t. Of course he couldn’t, it was foolish to ever think otherwise.

But what is he, if not a fool? Decades of defeat, of repetition, of endless cycles, and he never seems to learn his lesson. He was never meant to win.

A particularly violent shudder courses through him and he balls his hands into fists, presses his knuckles against the cool plasteel in front of him. He clenches his eyes till he sees spots, blinks them back open, and digs his fists into the wall as if he could bend it or push it away.

With horror, with panicked disbelief, he thinks: he misses them.

Pain, in the knuckles of his right hand. Again.

He _misses_ them.

The pain is dull, almost numb, and he goes again and again and again, puts his back into it, and—ah, _now_ he feels it properly. Crimson flowers bloom on the white tile. There was always a certain beauty to it, he supposes; amidst all the agony he always found certain elegance in martyrdom.

He hits the wall until the pain is blinding, or maybe he can’t see well with the tears gathering in his eyes. Or perhaps it’s simply the scalding shower water burning them, he can’t even tell anymore. He doesn’t stop. He might as well crush his hand to bone chips, but he wouldn’t even think to—

“—stop, Maul, _Maul!”_

The voice startles him, knocks a hitch into his pattern, but he presses on. Tano is a blur in his periphery as she dashes to the shower stall; she cries out and hisses when some of the water gets on her as she hurries to turn it off.

The momentary silence is hollow and terrifying, and on the next hit Maul roars out just to break it. Tano’s left his vicinity, as is clear from the freedom of his movement range; but she’s here. He ignores her cries of his name and pleadings to stop, shuts them out and just keeps adding to the smears on the wall—until he doesn’t.

When he’s pulled away and slammed against the back of the stall, he passingly thinks, _How dare she._

Tano stands by the sink with her arm outstretched, eyes wide, lips parted, breaths quick and deep.

“Maul,” she says, low and strained, and then her throat bobs. “Stop.”

Maul doesn’t move. He simply looks back, breathing just as heavily if not more; runs his tongue over his teeth. He clenches a fist, and the sneer turns to a grimace and then a loud groan when the torn flesh stretches painfully over the bones.

Tentative, Tano lowers her arm and backs away. Puts the full distance of the refresher’s space between them and stops in the doorway. 

“What...” she speaks, and now it’s quieter, weaker, and almost unsure. Dubiously placating, perhaps. Her head shakes slightly, her gaze is aslant. “...What happened? What’s wrong?”

In his mind, he’s bursting into hysterical laughter, but it doesn’t come up to the surface. He just looks at her, this small, fragile thing, and he can’t believe someone like her even exists. He looks at her and sees in perfect clarity all that she is: unbroken, uncrippled, unbled. 

“Maul,” she repeats after a long moment, and now it sounds as if she’s forcing herself to say anything at all, as if she would rather not. “Step out of the shower. Please. It’s okay.”

She reeks of fear. One wouldn’t even need the Force to be able to tell.

A scoff breaks out of Maul’s throat. It sounds pained, even to his own ears. “Go back to bed, Tano.”

She doesn’t move, just looks at him with all the wariness of a spooked animal ready to beat it, and dull anger flashes in the back of his skull.

“I said, _go back to bed.”_

Only by her reaction does he cognize the harsh rise of his voice. Tano flinches, takes another step back, and Maul doesn’t know what exactly maddens him so, but his ribcage contracts and clenches without mercy, trapping the air in his lungs, and he wants to roar. About how she doesn’t know. About how she has no idea. About how the people she mourns are but a small taste of the real world, how maybe these losses will make her open her eyes to what’s really out there, everything she’s been so carefully hidden and shielded away from. Pampered in the warm safety of her soft little life.

He can’t read her expression—but she gives him no time to. She slips back into the room and, for a minute or maybe less, Maul hears fussing. After, he only catches a glimpse through the doorway of the refresher as she, with her rucksack in hand and still wearing her partially wet, loose-fitting tunic, darts to the door.

It slams shut, and then there’s silence.

Maul gasps when he realizes he’s been holding his breath. It’s too quiet, so quiet his ears begin to ring and his body seems to try and compensate because his breathing grows rougher. Louder. Turns into a dry sob, then another. He clenches his teeth, slumps against the wall and then down to the floor; cradles his ruined hand in the other. It hurts like mad, burns and pulls as it swells up, and he wishes he was numb and didn’t care about the pain.

He wishes he didn’t care that he’s, once again, alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I mean what’d you expect


End file.
